May 8 – August 2, 2009 May 8 – August 2, 2009 hours long and filmed largely in Chantal Akerman real time, chronicles the mundane daily life of a woman (Born in 1950 in Brussels. Lives and who, facing the pressures of a works in Paris) lonely and isolated existence, snaps andJeanne commits Dielman a horrifying Akerman has made more than crime. Akerman has made more twenty-five films over thirty than twenty-five films, opening years. She has been awarded a a window on to the shifting Lumiere Award (France‘s Academy frames between fact and fiction, Award) and a FIRPRESCI Prize experimental and narrative film, (International Federation of Film and history and memory. Through Critics), was nominated for the Akerman’s lens, Golden Lion (Venice Film Festival), explores the politics of and was artist in residence at territorial borders, recent histories Harvard University. She has of racism, and the poetics of exhibited her films and installations personal journeys,Moving reimagining Through Time the internationally. cinematicand Space possibilities for image, the gaze, space, performance, and narration. Cover image: , 2002 Video installation (still) Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York and Paris De l’autre côté (From the Other Side) is a collaborative effort of four institutions: Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston; the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge; Miami Art Museum (a MAC@MAM presentation); and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. Chantal Akerman: Moving Through Time and Space The exhibition and catalog have been generously supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO). Additional support for the catalog has been provided by the Barbara Lee Family Foundation Fund at the Boston Foundation. General support for the Contemporary’s exhibitions program is generously provided by the Whitaker Foundation; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; William E. Weiss Foundation; Nancy Reynolds and Dwyer Brown; Regional Arts Commission; Missouri Arts Council, a state agency; Arts and Education Council; and members of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. May 8 – August 2, 2009 May 8 – August 2, 2009 1 Main Galleries spotlights the crossover genres , is a collection of striking Akerman approaches a subject of film and visual art. images of Eastern Europe and its directly linked to her own history. The exhibition begins with citizens in the transition period Shooting the film while teaching Akerman’s newest commission following the end of the Cold War. and living in Tel Aviv, Akerman . A Eighteenla fiction monitors retrace a journey limits the frame to the confines collage of twenty short stories— that extends from the end of of her apartment. Voice-over equal in number to cigarettes in a summer to the deepest winter, from narration serves as the framework pack—plays out over the course East Germany, across Poland and for her reflections on family ofFemmes a twenty-minute d’Anvers en Novembre loop, where the Baltics, to Moscow—capturing history, her Jewish identity, and her Born in Belgium and living in woman and cigarette share each the essence, if not the historical childhood. She wonders whether Paris, Chantal Akerman is widely screen. Touching on Akerman’s particulars, of a region on the normal everyday life is possible in recognized as one of the most foundation in feminist filmmaking move. this place and whether filming is a important directors in film history. and her deep connection to a (1999) initially realistic option. With no intentions Since the 1970s, she has navigated highly personal, yet distant, began as a “meditation on the defined in advance, the film takes the vast expanse of cinema—from cinematic point of view, this double American South” inspired by its natural course. ambitious documentary form to the projection remains ambiguous and Akerman’s love for the work of Since avant-garde to narrative feature- fraught with tension. writersSud William (South) Faulkner and James (1968), Akerman has films. The five projects of this Her largest multi-part Baldwin. The film‘s direction quickly continued to create powerful touring exhibition span more than installation to date, shifted after the racially motivated films that picture women at work two decades of Akerman’s career. (2002) offers an murder of James Byrd Jr. in Jasper, and home, Sautetheir interpersonalma ville (Blow up From her first museum installation, unsentimental look at the plight of Texas in 1998. Byrd, a black man, relationshipsMy Town) with family and illegal Mexican immigrants as they was killed by three whites who friends, and the universal themes (1995), to attempt the dangerousDe l’autre crossing côté chained him to their truck and of food, love, sex, romance, art, her most recent from(From Aguathe Other Prieta, Side) Sonora, Mexico dragged him three miles through and storytelling. Akerman worked to Douglas, Arizona. Akerman predominantly black parts of the briefly in New York in 1972, D’est: Au bord (2007), de la fictionshe has (From expanded the approaches the documentary county until one of his arms came returning to France the next year herEast: cinema-based Bordering on Fiction) practice into from an unobtrusive and objective off and he was decapitated. What to make her first feature film, the spaces of art,Les deconstructing femmes d’Anvers standpoint, evident from the lack began as an elegant meditation (1974), a heren Novembre films and (Women reimagining of Antwerp them in in of an omniscient narrator and the on the South became a passionate study of the shifting boundaries installationNovember) form. In a large scale long takes that capture miles of documentary capturing the of identity and sexuality. In 1975, exhibition that takes over the dividing fence along the Mexico- emotionally tumultuous aftermath she made her best-known andJe, most Contemporary’s Main Galleries, Arizona border. Another large- of Byrd’s murder. influentialtu, il, elle (I, You, film, He, She) scale installation, In (2006) . Three Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai Moving Through Time and Space D’est: Au bord de Là-bas (Down There) de Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles , 1999 Video (still) 3750 Washington Boulevard, Saint Louis, Missouri 63108 314 – 535 – 4660 www.camstl.org Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York and Paris Sud (South).