On Tuesday, November 26, during the “Chantal by us” exhibition at /SAC Berthelot (str. Gen. H.M. Berthelot no. 5, intercom 10), will take place the performances “Mama râde/ Mama laughs” by Nicoleta Lefter x Katia Pascariu x Vlaicu Golcea and “Chantal Akerman par Chantal Akerman par Paula Dunker x Katia Pascariu x Laura Săvuțiu” with Paula Dunker, followed by a guided tour with Alex Radu.
“Mama laughs” -Nicoleta Lefter x Katia Pascariu x Vlaicu Golcea, 7PM
“The idea of the performance came to me after reading the book “Mama Laughs” by Chantal Akerman. I extracted moments of great vulnerability from the book, things that are never talked about and that no one prepares you for but that we all go through or will go through at some point. The performance is about the disappearance of a loved one, about mourning, about death. We enter the most intimate and uncensored fibers of a woman who will go through the death of her mother without whining for pity or becoming melodramatic; we put under the microscope an emotion that expands for 45 minutes, only to then lost in the noise on Calea Victoriei.” (Nicoleta Lefter)
“Chantal Akerman par Chantal Akerman par Paula Dunker x Katia Pascariu x Laura Săvuțiu” with Paula Dunker, 8PM
A dark-haired woman wearing a dark jacket and trousers enters and sits in an armchair to the right of the frame. Thus begins “Chantal Akerman par Chantal Akerman” (1996), an episode of the venerable series produced by French public television, “Cinéaste de notre temps”.
As Chantal Akerman (the woman in the armchair) explains, she proposes a self-portrait “with the idea of making my old films speak, treating them as twitches that I would edit to create a new film, which would be my portrait of myself”.
As Akerman originally envisioned, the films—fifteen of them presented in non-chronological order, like a vast audiovisual stream of consciousness—are left to speak for themselves. They tell about time and memory, composed and recomposed from static shots and frontal images in an ever-expanding repertoire. An overlay of experimental films, feature dramas, musical comedies and documentaries.
Paula Dunker’s work produced together with Laura Săvuțiu and Katia Pascariu starts from this self-portrait and from Akerman’s statement that “I prefer when someone else talks about my films” and is accompanied by a performative act.
Curatorial tour with Alex Radu 9 PM
Chantal Akerman (1950, Brussels – 2015, Paris), filmmaker, writer and multimedia artist, was a pioneer in the field of feminist and experimental films. Her Polish parents survived the Holocaust, which also became a recurring theme of research throughout her work: transgenerational trauma and the exploration of her Jewish identity.
In 2022, Sight and Sound magazine designated the film “Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles” (1975) as the best film of all time. For the first time in 70 years, the famous poll conducted once every 10 years puts a film directed by a woman at the top, which takes a conscious and radically feminist approach to cinema. From fiction and self-fiction films, she also went through documentaries, short and feature films, and later, after 1995, to video installations in exhibition spaces such as Jeu de Paume, MoMA, Center Pompidou, Documenta 11, Palais de Tokyo, Venice Biennale, Sao Paulo Biennale.
Considered one of the most important European filmmakers of her generation, Akerman has also made more than 15 video installations: “I would like visitors to have a physical experience through the time used in each frame. I want time to unfold inside them, to feel time entering them.”
Entry is free by reservation: https://forms.gle/nrAivyR7mTwyiga88. Entry will not be possible during performances. As the places are limited, please also inform the organizer at info@spatiuldeartacontemporana.ro if you can no longer make it so that we can offer the places to other spectators.
