Chantal Akerman and the Disclosure of the Everyday

Few artists have explored the overlaps between the personal and public spheres with the potency and poise of Chantal Akerman. In her films, Akerman unearths the extraordinary of the ordinary by exploring the isolating effects of humanity’s ritualized behaviors. Akerman’s films and installations manage to balance personal reflection with universal resonance. To further explore the significance of Akerman’s oeuvre, the School of Communication will hold a colloquium, October 14th, 2008 from 2:30-4:30 at the Cosford Cinema, to present and discuss various aspects of her work with:

• Ivone Margulies, Associate Professor in Film and Media Studies at Hunter College of the City University of New York and author of Nothing Happens: Chantal Akerman’s Hyperrealist Everyday

• William Rothman, Professor of Motion Pictures at the University of Miami and author of Documentary Film Classics

• Charles Warren, Adjunct Professor of Film at Boston University, Associate of the Visual and Environmental Studies Department at Harvard University, and editor of Beyond Document: Essays on Nonfiction Film

• Ralph Heyndels, Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Miami, who has written on Chaplin, Alain Resnais, Marguerite Duras, Cyril Collard, Bruno Dumont, among other filmmakers, as moderator

After the colloquium, the Cosford Cinema will screen De l’Autre Côté (From the Other Side, 2002) at 7:00 p.m. followed by a Q+A session with Chantal Akerman. "Chantal Akerman and the Disclosure of the Everyday" has been co-organized with the Miami Art Museum (MAM) and made possible with the generous support of the Joseph Carter Memorial Fund, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Miami, Women’s and Gender Studies Program at the University of Miami, the Consulate General of France in Miami, the Consulate General of Belgium in Miami, and the School of Communication at the University of Miami.

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TROUBLE THE WATER

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, TROUBLE THE WATER is directed and produced by Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine producers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal. The film tells the story of an aspiring rap artist and her streetwise husband, trapped in New Orleans by deadly floodwaters, who survive the storm and then seize a chance for a new beginning. It’s a redemptive tale of self-described street hustlers who become heroes that takes you inside Hurricane Katrina in a way never before seen on screen.

TROUBLE THE WATER opens the day before Katrina makes landfall, just blocks away from the French Quarter but far from the New Orleans that tourists know. Kimberly Rivers Roberts is turning her video camera on herself and her 9th Ward neighbors trapped in the city. “It’s going to be a day to remember,” Kim says excitedly into her new camera as the storm is brewing. It’s her first time shooting video and it’s rough, jumpy but dense with reality. Kim’s playful home-grown newscast tone grinds against the audience’s knowledge that hell is just hours away. There is no way for the audience to warn her. And for New Orleans’ poor, there is nowhere to run.

THE EXILES

Selected for the 2008 Berlin International Film Festival, The EXILES (1961) is an incredible feature film by Kent MacKenzie chronicling a day in the life of a group of twenty-something Native Americans who left reservation life in the 1950s to live in the district of Bunker Hill, Los Angeles, California. Bunker Hill was then a blighted residential locality of decayed Victorian mansions, sometimes featured in the writings of Raymond Chandler, John Fante and Charles Bukowski. The structure of the film is that of a narrative feature, the script pieced together from interviews with the documentary subjects.

In the vein of Charles Burnett's legendary KILLER OF SHEEP, this gritty, frills-free depiction of a marginalized L.A. community reflects the filmmaking impulses of John Cassavetes and Vittorio De Sica. It has been beautifully restored as a result of the collaboration between the UCLA Film & Television Archives and Milestone Film & Video.