Women Make Waves International Film Festival

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  • Master in Focus: Chantal Akerman

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    Opening Film

    The Way Things Go: Notes on Existence

    Sci-fi Reimagined: The Body as an Alien World

    Seeing in the Dark

    Distilled Landscape

    Special Screening: Salute to Trailblazers!

    Queering Voices

    Unruly Desires

    Cinemini

    Taiwan Competition

    Master in Focus: Chantal Akerman

    A defiant and uncompromising artist, Chantal AKERMAN traces her path freely, exploding narrative and geographical boundaries to wander between genres and styles, tackling fiction, documentary, musical, comedy and literary adaptation. Her filmography numbers some fifty films and has been widely shown throughout the world. Considered one of the most influential European directors of her generation, and one of the boldest cinematic visionaries of the past half century, she continued to expand the boundaries of cinematic language, taking a profoundly personal, aesthetically radical approach to the form as a way to investigate space and time, geography and identity, sexuality and desires, alienation and diaspora. Alongside her films, Chantal Akerman has closely blended film and video, producing installations from 1995 onwards, exhibited in major art institutions. A close friend of the written word, she is also the author of several books. She passed away in 2015, leaving behind monumental landmarks that have pointed the way for generations of artists, and exerted an incalculable influence on the evolution of feminist and avant-garde cinema and beyond. As Chantal Akerman’s lifelong work has undergone extensive digitization and restoration recently, this year’s “Master in Focus” program highlights some of her most groundbreaking and overlooked works. The program includes eight fiction, documentary, and experimental films by AKERMAN, along with video letters tributed by other artists. Marking a decade since AKERMAN’s passing, this program not only revisits her distinctive style and innovative visual language, but also seeks to introduce the rich diversity of her oeuvre to audiences. This program was made possible with the help of Chantal Akerman Foundation and Royal Film Archive of Belgium (CINEMATEK).
    Le jour où…

    Switzerland|1997|DCP|color|8min
    Les Rendez-vous d'Anna

    Belgium, France, Germany|1978|DCP|color|128min
    Toute une nuit

    Belgium, France|1982|DCP|color|91min
    J'ai faim, j'ai froid

    France|1984|DCP|b/w|14min
    Portrait d’une jeune fille de la fin des années 60 à Bruxelles

    France|1994|DCP|color|61min
    La Captive

    Belgium, France|2000|DCP|color|118min
    La Folie Almayer

    Belgium, France|2011|DCP|color|127min
    Là-bas

    Belgium, France|2006|DCP|color|79min
    Vents Violents (two letters to Chantal Akerman)

    Belgium|2024|DCP|color|20min