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D’Est is a wordless winter travelogue. Akerman voyages through the countries of the eastern block, behind the iron curtain, just a that system was in free fall. She travels through East Germany, Poland and the Baltic states, across Russia towards Moscow and its cavernous terminal stations.
The film begins with a series of late summer images, at the beach, or lazily in the park. Winter threatens. Snow falls. Long lines of anonymous people, suggestive of resignation and an unfathomable fortitude. Akerman’s camera tracks these lines, catching the stamp of frozen feet, the hunch of shoulders bearing the cold.
Bleak, for sure, but beautiful image-making and laying out of materials, the deft and caring work of a great artist. A work of astonishing, magical sublimity and intensity.
(From the East, Chantal Akerman 1993, 35mm, 110 mins) Thursday 22nd January 2015, 7pm, ICA London. Also held the following weekend: Jacques Rancière, Intervals of Cinema I: Rancière and Bresson in Dialogue. Friday 30th January, 2015 - 5.30pm King’s College London. A screening of Bresson’s Mouchette followed by Rancière in a discussion of the film (will end at around 8.45pm). |
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