Chantal Akerman's Down There
Icarus Films
•
1h 18m
Directed by Chantal Akerman • Documentary • 2006 • 78 minutes
According to director Chantal Akerman, she never planned to make a film in Israel. She was convinced that neutrality does not exist and that her subjectivity would get in her way. She was sure she would only be able to reflect on 'the Israel question' while she was outside the country.
It was only when she taught at the University of Tel Aviv, picked up a camera and 'found' suitable images that she decided to make a film. Akerman spends a brief period on her own in an apartment by the sea in Tel Aviv. She takes the chamber play to its ultimate form: it is almost entirely chamber. She films from the apartment and in her narration she talks about her family, her Jewish identity and her childhood. She wonders whether normal everyday life is possible in this place and whether filming is a realistic option. Akerman does not film here with any intentions defined in advance. She wants to be as open and blank as possible to ensure that things take their own course.
"What's remarkable is the degree to which Ms. Akerman uses the interplay of place and displacement to wrest beauty from despair."—J. Hoberman, The New York Times
"One of the great documentary self-portraits."—Richard Brody, The New Yorker
Up Next in Icarus Films
-
Dreams Rewired
Directed by Manu Luksch, Martin Reinhart and Thomas Tode • Documentary • With Tilda Swinton • 2015 • 85 minutes
Tilda Swinton's hypnotic voiceover and a treasure trove of rare archival footage culled from hundreds of films from the 1880s through the 1930s-much of it previously unseen-combine to ...
-
El-Sisi: Egypt's New Pharaoh
Directed by Claire Billet, Nadia Blétry • Documentary • With François Hollande, Maye Kabil, Ariane Lavrilleux, Ahmed Abdel Quddus • 2026 • 53 minutes
To an outsider, Egypt looks like a dynamic country reinventing itself. Under president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, construction is booming, with dams, b...
-
El Velador
Directed by Natalia Almada • Documentary • 2011 • 72 minutes
Martin, the night watchman, arrives with the setting sun in his rumbling blue Chevrolet. The cemetery mascots, EI Negro y La Negra, chase his truck down the road and greet him with wagging tails. The sound of construction fades away as...