The New York films : La chambre, Hotel Monterey, News from home

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La chambre: Akerman 'La chambre' exists in two versions: 'La chambre 1' is silent whereas 'La chambre 2' has a soundtrack. In this early experimental silent short film, the filmmaker focuses on int...

La chambre: Akerman 'La chambre' exists in two versions: 'La chambre 1' is silent whereas 'La chambre 2' has a soundtrack. In this early experimental silent short film, the filmmaker focuses on intimate architectural spaces, seen through the slow moving lens, protracted shots, and minimalist aesthetics of New York structuralist film of the late 1960s and early 1970s, a 360° circular panoramic shot that slowly pans around the furniture and clutter of one small apartment room, a moving still life -- with Akerman herself occasionally staring back at us.

Hotel Monterey: One of Akerman's very first films, a formally minimal, faintly surreal, completely soundless documentary about a cheap New York City residence hotel Upper West Side populated mostly by older people and outcasts of American society, shot over a period of 15 hours in a series of long takes and tracking shots that move upward through the building, from the lobby, to the elevators, hallways, rooms, finally ending with a panorama from the hotel's rooftop just as dawn is breaking.

News from home: This personal documentary, a meditation on urban alienation and personal and familial disconnection, presents a series of abstract and fragmentary images of everyday urban life, streetscapes, and subways in 1970s Manhattan, a time capsule of New York City paired with a soundtrack composed of Akerman's recitations of the text of letters that her mother wrote from their native Belgium.

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