• 9030 Sun, 17 Aug 2025 16:15:00 @ Kino 2

Director: Chantal Akerman
Producer: Chantal Akerman
Cinematographer: Babette Mangolte

Akerman creates an intimate still life in fluid form in this influential film that cleverly rearranges time and space.

Filmed the day after wrapping Hotel Monterey on a 16mm reel left over from that shoot – with cinematographer Babette Mangolte again behind the lens – La Chambre is a defining work within Akerman’s career. Inspired by the avant-garde cinema scene she was exposed to in New York, particularly the work of Michael Snow, this ingenious experimental short silently takes in the interior of a room belonging to a SoHo flat. Beginning with multiple 360-degree rotations featuring the director occasionally appearing in frame on the bed – eating an apple, meeting our gaze – what comes to be an expected rhythm is broken when the camera gives way to a new pattern.

2K Restoration. Restored in 2023 by Cinémathèque royale de Belgique (CINEMATEK) and Fondation Chantal Akerman, with the support of Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles and the European Union – NextGenerationEU, under the supervision of the director of photography, Babette Mangolte.