Among the special events of the 13th edition of the One World Romania festival which will take place from March 20 to 29, there will be two retrospectives dedicated to the American documentary filmmaker Ross McElwee and to the Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman.
They will help us discover or rediscover the filmography of these unique filmmakers who knew how to combine their life experiences in the complex weaving of some very actual reflections on the role of the human in society.
The Ross McElwee Retrospective includes the short film
Back Yard (1984) and the feature films
Charleen (1980),
Sherman's March (1986),
Time Indefinite (1993),
Six O'Clock News (1997),
Bright Leaves (2003) and
Photographic Memory (2011). The filmmaker will be a guest of the festival and will attend the Q&A sessions that will follow the screenings.
The Chantal Akerman Retrospective will include her first short film
Saute ma ville, (1968) and
Je, tu, il, elle (1974),
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975),
News from Home (1977),
D’est (1993),
Sud (1999),
De l’autre côté (2002),
Là-bas (2006) and
No Home Movie (2015). Claire Atherton, who worked with Akerman for more than 30 years, will introduce the films and will hold a masterclass in which he will talk about this defining professional and personal meeting.
Ross McElwee follows the influence that the past has on the present, by means of investigating his own family core. Born in a conservative family in the south of the US, McElwee tried to catch on film, ever since
he was a student, the way the schism between South and North is felt, especially in racial and moral matters, in the behavior of those around him. Later on, he pushes further the exploring of his own intimacy, making of his different personal trials – such as his wife`s miscarriage, the death of his father or becoming a parent – opportunities to change his perspective on the American society and on life itself.
Chantal Akerman also uses her intrinsical or temporary belonging to some categories – being a woman, a daughter a Jewish, an expat – in order to knowingly speak, without didacticism, about the burden that is implied when taking on those roles. Her entire cinema militates against reducing the person to a series of traits and tasks that are given to him/her by the society. And this refusal is expressed by the very careful and empathic observing of the human complexity. For anybody who has eyes, it manifests anywhere, both in the meaningless activities of the inhabitants of Tel Aviv, that Akerman shoots from her window in
Là-bas and in her relationship with her own mother, Natalia, whose physical or metaphorical presence mark the films
News from Home an
No Home Movie. Beyond their message, Chantal Akerman`s films are noteworthy also because of the formal experimenting and especially for the way she treats temporality, by making an indispensable map for every film lover interested in the evolution of the film modernism from the half past century.
Claire Atherton grew up in New York, with her American father and her Romanian-born mother and left to France to study the Eastern civilizations. Later on she attended the prestigious Ecole nationale supérieure Louis Lumière. She met Chantal Akerman on the occasion of a theatre performance that the actress Delphine Seyrig asked them to record on film. This was the beginning of a fruitful collaboration - first as a cinematographer, than as an editor – that lasted over 30 years and included fiction films, documentaries and video installations. Atherton is often invited to share her experience during different workshops and she teaches in different school such as La Fémis and HEAD Genève.
Details:
www.festival-oneworld.ro 
