Since its founding in 1969 by the French Directors’ Guild, the Directors’ Fortnight has served as a vital and boldly independent counter program to the Cannes Film Festival. This year, the Directors’ Fortnight is taking it on the road for the first time, presenting locally curated selections of its 2024 program with director Julien Rejl in person.
The Fortnight Extended is presented by the Quinzaine des cinéastes, Villa Albertine, Acropolis Cinema, and the Museum of the Moving Image. Discount passes for admission to all seven screenings at the Culver Theater can be purchased here.
About the film:
On the occasion of its restoration, the Fortnight Extended is delighted to present this major and yet still too-little-known film by Chantal Akerman, who explores Jewish American identity in this multilayered portrait of the immigrant experience. Shot in Brooklyn near the Williamsburg Bridge, Histoires d’Amérique takes the form of a series of first-person addresses delivered by a cross-section of Jewish New Yorkers (including Living Theatre cofounder Judith Malina), whose by turns tragic and humorous tales speak to a collective history of trauma, displacement, and resilience. A Janus Films release.
TRT: 92 min
“Colorful, soulful stories of hope and despair are balanced by the garlicky comedy… Akerman highlights the forthright display of a distinctive Jewish-American diaspora culture.” —Richard Brody, The New Yorker
"Akerman created memories to mourn and to make up for the disruption of a continuous and oral tradition passed down from one generation to the next. Histoires d’Amérique is the closest she has yet come to making her film of rememoration. " —Janet Bergstrom, Endless Night: Cinema and Psychoanalysis, Parallel Histories
"The jokes, stories, skits and silences are the verbal survivals of European Jewish culture, cast up by diaspora on these shores, preserving certain forms of life in the shtetls and cities of the lost old world. The survival of this film has become something in need of a prayer." —Adam Roberts, ICA London
(Available to download after screening date)