ΜΠΑΜΠΕΤ ΜΑΝΓΚOΛΤ / BABETTE MANGOLTE
Chantal Akerman and Babette Mangolte collaborated for the first time on this short experimental film. Akerman was looking for a female cameraperson and despite the age difference they soon knew that they shared the idea that cinema should not be a male affair and that they searched a cinematic language of women. As Mangolte's camera slowly rotates 360 degrees in a cluttered room, the viewer gazes at a bowl of fruit, a teakettle and the director herself, on the bed, under the covers or peeling an apple, as her position changes with each rotation of the camera.
Chantal Akerman (1950-2015) was a pioneering Belgian filmmaker of Jewish descent who experimented with matters of perception, gender, and sexuality, as well as the personal and historical traumas of the Holocaust. She made over 40 films, most notably Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), in cooperation with Babette Mangolte, with its long silent takes of a woman's daily life. She ended her life at the age of 65 in Paris.
Babette Mangolte (1941) is a French-American director, cinematographer, photographer and artist who has lived in New York since 1970. She has worked as a cinematographer with Chantal Akerman and Yvonne Rainer and has made important experimental films on the very act of looking, about the American landscape,
about contemporary dance and the art of performance. She is considered one of the most important artists of the American avant-garde and
currently teaches at the University of San Diego in California.
