Thursday, March 14, 2002, 6:15pm
A central but rarely shown film in the history of feminist cinema, Jeanne Dielman follows three days in the life of a middle-class European woman as she does her daily housework, cooks for her teenage son, occasionally engages in prostition, and gradually descends into madness. Using the real-time element of the long, uninterrupted shot, Akerman forces the viewer to concentrate on aspects of life and work that are rarely shown in conventional cinema and that convey a terrifying sense of what is most irreplaceable in life: the passing of time (Jeffrey Skoller). 1975, Chantal Akerman, Belgium, 198 min, 35mm.