I didn't have to think long about today's tip. Chantal Akerman's latest film runs this afternoon at 13:15. No Home Movie is about her mother, who survived Auschwitz, and her final days. And about the difficult relationship Akerman had with her mother. She tells in an interview that once they were together in Mexico for a cousin's wedding. One of Akerman's films was playing at a festival nearby, so she could do a Q&A. Afterwards, her mother said: you have all this, and I only have Auschwitz. It is telling of the relationship, the daughter never gets close to the great trauma, but is obsessed with it.
One of the things she did with No Home Movie wanted is to show how small her mother's world has become. And how crazy it is that, having been imprisoned in the camp, she seems to lock herself in a small, almost impersonal space.
Something that as a theme is already in Jeanne Dielmann Sat, Akerman later realised, that woman was also deliberately making her life very small. Even then, she was already exploring her relationship with her mother.
That smallness also makes the film stylistically very different from her other work. Less carefully composed imagery, more shot with small cameras. However, there is again a lot of emphasis on doors and exits. The title is apt: it is almost exclusively home movie, with even bits of skype conversation. But what that 'home' is then remains complicated.
We now know that it is Akerman's last film. She passed away in October.
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