Cinema, de notre temps - Chantal Akerman (1997)

Short (58 min) piece for French TV. The first half is Akerman simply looking into the camera and reading a letter about herself, her thoughts and her process. She is quite funny, and moving, really getting to the heart of some of the challenges of being an artist. She has a lovely bit talking about how much easier it was to be brave when she was starting out and didn't know enough to be afraid.

The 2nd half is comprised of clips from many of her films, ranging from a few seconds to about a minute or more. While they don't seem to tell a literal story, they could be seen as illuminating what Akerman sees as different elements of her personality and history. There is certainly a feeling that the pieces were chosen and fit together with a lot of poetic, if not literal intention.

All in all a very interesting cinematic self-portrait, one half focused on words and the verbal, the other visual and metaphoric. (IMDB)

Vídeo Codec: XviD
Vídeo Bitrate: 1.192 Kbps
Áudio Codec: MPEG1/2 L3
Áudio Bitrate: 102 kbps 48 KHz
Resolution: 592 x 448
Aspect Ratio: 1.321 (4x3)
Frame Rate: 25.000 FPS