Why I paid money to watch shots of buildings and streets for 90 minutes
How well do we know the city landscape surrounding us, the urban jungles we have created as a reflection of ourselves? Do we exist within it as a living, breathing part of its fabric, or does the city only exist to hold us, as simple means of accommodation?
As part of Glasgow Film Theatre’s CineMasters season, the focus turns to Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman, who throughout the 1970s until her death in 2015 shifted the ground from under film with her vision of radical space, rhythm and personal perspective. She is often seen as a director born from second-wave feminism, her portrayal of womanhood and femininity and the very real and personal ways that they coalesce with our interior and exterior lives being very much unseen in film at that point.
Last week the Glasgow Film Theatre screened 1976’s News from Home. The film, a quasi-documentary composed of static shots of New York City, accompanied by a voiceover of letters read from a worried mother who sees little reply back (personal letters written by the filmmaker's own mother), is an example of radical filmmaking that seems to have escaped the enclosed walls of the avant-garde and........
© Herald Scotland
