Calendar

Venue:
Online


D‘Est by Chantal Akerman
1 h 47 min
Documentary
1993

The viewer as Traveler D'Est reflects on an exploration of the disappearing borders of communism, this long emblematic, partially unfathomable territory, whose opacity today, strangely far from clearing up, seems rather to be enlarging and becoming more complex in light of the known political upheavals. Driven by this lack of understanding and an urgent need less for knowledge than for sensation, Chantal Akerman has embarked on the journey and brought us a wonderful documentary that refuses to speak of countries and fix things. The approach wants to be impressionistic, it resists any reductive symbolization. Therefore it is not called "The East", but FROM EAST, which means both an inevitably disappointing search (abroad one always remains a foreigner, especially today) and a gift (the "from"). FROM EAST, new secrets come to us: secretly, without saying anything, at a distance, people reveal something of themselves and of their world, out of kilter; thanks to the use of a camera that is as present as it is distant. The film, shot in 16mm, consists mainly of exterior shots, fixed shots and tracking shots. No commentary, almost no conversation disturbs our perception. Only the echo of sounds reaches us, as it were, like identifiable signs: the sound of the icy wind, a music heard at someone's house, the roar of cars. D'Est is a journey with long breath, where the spectator, like a traveler, is alternately exhausted, enterprising, attentive or absent. It goes from summer to winter, from the flat countryside to the city, from the suburbs to the sea, from Poland to Russia, without all these places being explicitly named. The viewer is guided as well as left to himself, to his thoughts, to his curiosity. The first half of the film shows mainly landscapes: a lonely, waving tree in the middle of the plain, a crossroads in the deserted countryside. The image vibrates, anything can happen here. The mysteries of the East are then revealed by gatherings of people in the early morning or at night, ghostly groups of wrapped-up people waiting - for the train, the bus, the end of the world, you don't know. Faces look at us or seem to ignore the presence of the camera, whose hypnotic drives are of rare quality. One has the impression that Akerman has repeated, that she has returned to the same place several times to absorb the atmosphere more deeply. Like any great documentary, D'Est is full of potential fictions. Jacques Morice "Cahiers du Cinéma", No. 472, 1993, quoted from: "24th Int. Forum des jungen Films", Berlin 1994

Trailer

20:00 introduction and screening
Followed by the film discussion,

Foyer: https://hgb-leipzig.webex.com/hgb-leipzig/j.php?MTID=m8179159327b4775e208c1ba893371644