Please note: This event took place in Feb 2025
Best known for her landmark second feature Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), Chantal Akerman was a groundbreaking figure in experimental cinema. The film is a rigorous, minimalistic tour-de-force, making no concession to mainstream conventions of the period, and in topping the Sight and Sound Greatest Films of All Time Poll in 2022, made Akerman the first female director to earn that accolade.
To kick off our season of Akerman’s films playing throughout February and March, the curator of the BFI’s retrospective Chantal Akerman: Adventures in Perception, Isabel Stevens, takes us on a whistlestop tour of the director's radical and experimental filmmaking approach, as well as her influence on directors from the likes of Joanna Hogg, Payal Kapadia, Céline Sciamma.