Capital Celluloid 2014 - Day 295: Thu Oct 23

Histoires d'Amerique (Akerman, 1989): ICA Cinema, 7pm


This screening is part of what is believed to be the most complete retrospective ever attempted of Chantal Akerman's work, and is presented by film collective A Nos Amours.

Here is the ICA introduction:

Histoires d’Amerique was shot in New York, conjouring up a specific diasporic context – not dissimilar to that of Woody Allen’s masterpiece Broadway Danny Rose. This may be the new world, but the horror of the old is never far from the surface. Mordant observation and biting cynism rule.
Akerman asked her cast to recreate jokes, fables and anecdotes, culled from real-life testimony, sashaying from the comical to the tragic, interleaving all with slapstick humour as only Jewish New York knows how. As Akerman has said: when history become impossible to bear, there is only one thing to do: send yourself up and laugh.

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