Hello all, this week's underground screening is a marvelous post-Valentine's Day presentation, the notorious 3 hour+ anti-epic, _Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles_ (1976). Note that this film has never been released on video in this country, so take this chance to catch up on classic 1970s cinema with your sweetheart.
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A classic of both feminist and experimental filmmaking, Chantal Akerman's marathon dissection of the life of Belgian housewife/mother/prostitute Jeanne Dielman (Delphine Seyrig) stays on the surface of the details of Jeanne's humdrum daily life, as if it were a real-life, real-time documentary of an ordinary life. Playing with feminist film theory’s critique of the masculine spectatorial gaze, Akerman crafts a cinematic experience that is rapturous, critical, and desolate all at once.
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The underground film series is sponsored by Indiana University's Department of Communication and Culture. All screenings are on alternating Fridays at 7 p.m. in room 251 of the Radio-TV building on the IU campus. All screenings are free and open to the public, and free parking is ample in the lot adjacent to the building, provided you clearly display an underground flyer on the dashboard of your vehicle.
