First published in France in 2013, My Mother Laughs is the final book written by the legendary and beloved Belgian artist and director Chantal Akerman (1950-2015) before her death. A moving and unforgettable memoir, the book delves deeply into one of the central themes and focuses of Akerman's often autobiographical films: her mother, who was the direct subject of her final film No Home Movie (2015). With a particular focus on the difficulties Akerman faced in conjunction with the end of her mother's life, the book combines a matter-of-fact writing style with family photographs and stills from her own films in order to better convey the totality of her experience. Akerman writes: "With pride because I believed at last in my ability to say something that I'd had trouble saying. I told myself, I am strong for once, I speak. I speak the truth."

Through films that alternate between containment, order, and symmetry on the one hand, and obsession, explosiveness, and a lack of control on the other, Chantal Akerman has gained a reputation as one of the most significant filmmakers working today. Her 1975 film Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles is widely regarded as the most important feminist film of that decade. In Nothing Happens, Ivone Margulies presents the first comprehensive study of this influential avant-garde Belgian filmmaker. Margulies grounds her critical analysis in detailed discussions of Akerman's work--from Saute ma ville, a 13-minute black-and-white film made in 1968, through Jeanne Dielman and Je tu il elle to the present. Focusing on the real-time representation of a woman's everyday experience in Jeanne Dielman, Margulies brings the history of social and progressive realism and the filmmaker's work into perspective. Pursuing two different but related lines of inquiry, she investigates an interest in the everyday that stretches from postwar neorealist cinema to the feminist rewriting of women's history in the seventies. She then shows how Akerman's "corporeal cinema" is informed by both American experiments with performance and duration and the layerings present in works by European modernists Bresson, Rohmer, and Dreyer. This analysis revises the tired opposition between realism and modernism in the cinema, defines Akerman's minimal-hyperrealist aesthetics in contrast to Godard's anti-illusionism, and reveals the inadequacies of popular characterizations of Akerman's films as either simply modernist or feminist. An essential book for students of Chantal Akerman's work, Nothing Happens will also interest international film critics and scholars, filmmakers, art historians, and all readers concerned with feminist film theory.

The milestone 100th issue of Camera Obscura recognizes the work and legacy of Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman (1950-2015). Arguably the most important figure in feminist film culture, Akerman is central to Camera Obscura's own legacy, and her film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles was covered in one of the first issues of the journal. The contributors to this special issue return to Akerman's work, illuminating her films, writings, and installations through new criticism and discussion. The issue includes a rich collection of newly published photographs, scholarly essays by leading Akerman scholars, a filmography and installation list, and rare interviews with Akerman's close collaborators. Contributors. Claire Atherton, Janet Bergstrom, Kelley Conway, Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, Ute Holl, Heike Klippel, Eva Kuhn, Matias Lavin, Alisa Lebow, Brenda Longfellow, Babette Mangolte, Ivone Margulies, Michael Mazière, Eva Meyer, Sandra Percival, Jane Stein, Cécile Tourneur, Maureen Turim, Sonia Wieder-Atherton, Patricia White

Chantal Akerman was one of the most significant directors of our times. A radical innovator of cinematic forms, she was at the forefront of feminist and women's filmmaking. In the 1990s, she developed an important installation practice and began to experiment with self-writing. Focusing on Akerman's works of the last two decades, a period during which she diversified her creative practice, this collection traces her artistic trajectory across different media. From her documentaries 'bordering on fiction' to her final installation, NOW, the volume elucidates the thematic and aesthetic concerns of the later works, placing particular emphasis on self-portraiture, the exploration of intimacy, and the treatment of trauma, memory and exile. It also attends to the aural and visual textures that underpin her art. Drawing on a wide range of theoretical approaches as well as engaging more creatively with Akerman's work, the essays provide a new optic for understanding this deeply personal, prescient oeuvre. Marion Schmid is Professor of French Literature and Film at the University of Edinburgh. Emma Wilson is Professor of French Literature and the Visual Arts at the University of Cambridge.

Chantal Akerman is widely acclaimed as one of the most original and important directors working in Europe today. A towering figure in women’s and feminist film-making, she has produced a diverse and intensely personal body of work ranging from minimalist portraits of the everyday to exuberant romantic comedies, and from documentaries and musicals to installation art. This book traces the director’s career at the crossroads between experimental and mainstream cinema, contextualising her work within the American avant-garde of the 1970s, European anti-naturalism, feminism and the post-modern aesthetics. While offering an in-depth analysis of her multi-faceted film style, it also stresses the social and ethical dimension of her work, especially as regards her representation of marginal groups and her exploration of exilic and diasporic identities. Particular attention is given to the inscription of the Holocaust and of Jewish memory in her films.

"The book aims to be an accurate and reliable source of detailed information about the films -- in short the esential Chantal Akerman companion"--back cover

Considered to be one of the most influential auteurs in French cinema today, Chantal Akerman has had a profound impact on both feminist filmmaking discourse and avant-garde film. She has shown herself to be an uncompromising and dedicated practitioner of the cinematic arts in works such as I…You…He…She (Je tu il elle,1974); Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975); Meetings with Anna (Les Rendez-vous d’Anna,1978); American Stories/Food, Family, and Philosophy (Histoires d’Amérique,1989); and From the East (D’Est,1993). Akerman has continued to create new and unexpected films that explore ideas about image, gaze, space, performance, and narration. This collection of essays edited by Gwendolyn Audrey Foster assesses Akerman’s wide-ranging oeuvre, particularly her exploration of identity and memory, and considers her development as an artist and as a social force. Along with a detailed filmography and bibliography, both compiled by Foster, ten of the key figures in contemporary feminist moving-image discourse explore the themes with which Akerman is preoccupied: sexuality and lesbian identity, subjectivity, alterity, quotidian reality, the mother-daughter relationship, and Jewish diasporic identity. The contributors include Maureen Turim, Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, Jennifer M. Barker, Ivone Margulies, Catherine Fowler, Janet Bergstrom, Ginette Vincendeau, Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Judith Mayne, and Kristine Butler. Originally published in the United Kingdom by Flicks Books, this marks the first United States edition of Identity and Memory: The Films of Chantal Akerman.