Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 34: Mon Feb 3

Golden Eighties (Akerman, 1986): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 8.35pm

This screening, part of the Chantal Akerman season at BFI, will feature an introduction by cellist and composer Sonia Wieder-Atherton. The film is also being shown on February 13th and 28th.

Chicago Reader review:
Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman (Jeanne Dielman) made this independent work from a work-in-progress known as The Eighties (the English title of the finished film is Window Shopping). Forty minutes of videotaped auditions and rehearsals for Akerman's shopping center musical are followed by three production numbers—in radiant 35-millimeter—from the film. The subject is first and foremost Akerman's love of actors and the filmmaking process, and second the process itself—the intermediary steps between conception and perfection, from physical materials to cinematic illusions. If you don't know Akerman's work, this is an excellent place to start: it's a very funny, very idiosyncratic piece from one of the most sympathetic of modernist filmmakers.

Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the opening to the film.

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