Subscribe to watch - 14-day free trial, then £6.99 a month

No Home But Cinema: The Spaces of Chantal Akerman
This new video essay by writer and critic Jessica McGoff, traces the restless movement in the works of Chantal Akerman, where the concept of home is always slipping just out of reach.
Director: Jessica McGoff
Overview
While Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles remains Chantal Akerman’s most celebrated work, her cinema stretches far beyond that iconic kitchen. Her films map spaces that feel both intimate and uninhabitable, tethered to history yet unmoored from time. No Home but Cinema, a new video essay by writer and critic Jessica McGoff, traces Akerman’s restless movement through bedrooms and kitchens, city streets and borders, where the concept of home is always slipping just out of reach. In an era of mass displacement and digital alienation, Akerman’s films feel more vital than ever: cinema as an act of remembering, of inhabiting absence, and of lingering in the spaces we leave behind.
Related

Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
Drama 1975 202 mins Director: Chantal Akerman
Chantal Akerman's magnificent epic of experimental cinema offering a feminist perspective on recurrent events of everyday life.

Golden Eighties Golden Eighties
Musical 1986 99 mins Director: Chantal Akerman
Song, dance and romance charge this joyous hair-salon set musical, but Akerman’s take on 80s consumerism is anything but frothy.

Je tu il elle Je tu il elle
Drama 1974 86 mins Director: Chantal Akerman
Akerman’s debut feature, with its 10-minute lesbian sex scene, revealed its maker to be a radical and uncompromising force in cinema.

Visions, Dreams and Magic: The Unmade Films of Michael Powell Visions, Dreams and Magic: The Unmade Films of Michael Powell
Short documentary 2024 41 mins Director: Nic Wassell
Discover the unrealised visions and passion projects of revered British filmmaker Michael Powell, in this fascinating documentary featuring Oscar-winning editor Thelma Schoonmaker.

Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
Drama 1975 202 mins Director: Chantal Akerman
Chantal Akerman's magnificent epic of experimental cinema offering a feminist perspective on recurrent events of everyday life.

Les Rendez-vous d'Anna Les Rendez-vous d'Anna
Drama 1978 128 mins Director: Chantal Akerman
A quasi self-portrait that was unfairly neglected on its release, this road movie is a profound musing on loneliness, displacement and the long shadow of the war.

Je tu il elle Je tu il elle
Drama 1974 86 mins Director: Chantal Akerman
Akerman’s debut feature, with its 10-minute lesbian sex scene, revealed its maker to be a radical and uncompromising force in cinema.

Saute ma ville Saute ma ville
Drama 1968 13 mins Director: Chantal Akerman
Chantal Akerman’s plays a manic heroine in her early, incendiary critique of domesticity and conformity.

Golden Eighties Golden Eighties
Musical 1986 99 mins Director: Chantal Akerman
Song, dance and romance charge this joyous hair-salon set musical, but Akerman’s take on 80s consumerism is anything but frothy.

Le Déménagement Le Déménagement
Drama 1993 39 mins Director: Chantal Akerman
Surrounded by unpacked boxes, a man delivers an extended monologue on indecision and regret.

Amores perros Amores perros
Drama 2000 148 mins Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Alejandro González Iñárritu's (Birdman, The Revenant) gripping debut feature is a savagely brilliant triptych around the theme of animalistic desires.

Drugstore Cowboy Drugstore Cowboy
Drama 1989 101 mins Director: Gus Van Sant
Matt Dillon and his not-so-merry band of junkies rob pharmacies and cheat death.

Maurice Maurice
Drama 1987 140 mins Director: James Ivory
Merchant Ivory’s landmark adaptation of E M Forster’s classic LGBTQ+ novel and a precursor to the James Ivory-scripted Call Me By Your Name, starring Hugh Grant, James Wilby and Rupert Graves.

Architecton Architecton
Documentary 2024 98 mins Director: Viktor Kossakovsky
Victor Kossakovsky’s film essay looks at the way we have constructed our built world through a series of breathtaking sequences.

Layla Layla
2024 100 mins Director: Amrou Al-Kadhi
A British-Palestinian drag performer catches the eye of a strait-laced white man in Amrou Al-Kadhi’s stunning, semi-autobiographical debut.

When I Saw You When I Saw You
Drama 2014 94 mins Director: Annemarie Jacir
Following the Six-Day War in 1967, a young Palestinian refugee boy yearns to be reunited with his father and joins a band of freedom fighters.