yours,
Five new films collaboratively combined to form a single work responding to Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman’s luminous News From Home (1976). Artists Sirah Foighel Brutmann and Eitan Efrat, Eva Giolo, Rebecca Jane Arthur, Katja Mater, and Maaike Neuville each engage in their own way with the epistolary device of Akerman’s film, as well as recurrent themes of alienation, distance and the mother-daughter relationship.
Programmer’s Note
Departing from News from Home, the invited filmmakers draw inspiration from Akerman’s films more widely. The political subjectivitities contained within her oeuvre become starting points for an imagined intergenerational dialogue. Through their responses, a clear lineage of Akerman’s influence can be seen, responding to the Belgian master from both distance and closeness, in landscapes and gestures familiar and unfamiliar. The intimate sign-off of the film’s title, yours, denotes a kind of devotion, a fond farewell. Vignettes presented together as a unified whole demonstrate the varied approaches undertaken by the filmmakers and provide an insight into the forms and themes running through contemporary Belgian filmmaking. (Myriam Mouflih)
Director Biographies
Eva Giolo is an artist working in film, video, and installation. Her work places particular focus on the female experience, employing experimental and documentary strategies to explore themes of intimacy, permanence and memory, along with the analysis of language and semiotics.
Rebecca Jane Arthur is a visual artist working predominantly with the moving image and writing. Her works revolve around portraits of people and places, and her interest lies in how personal stories depict a socio-political context and history. She is a PhD in the Arts candidate at KASK & Conservatorium in Ghent where she also teaches in the media arts department.
Katja Mater’s practice focuses on the parameters of photography and film from a meta-perspective, using them as non-transparent media. By creating hybrids between different optical media, installation and performance she documents something that often is positioned beyond our human ability to see.
Sirah Foighel Brutmann and Eitan Efrat work in collaboration, creating works in the audiovisual field, installation and performance. Their practice focuses on the performative aspects of the moving image. In their work they aim to mark the spatial and durational potentialities of reading of images – moving or still; the relations between spectatorship and history; the temporality of narratives and memory and the material surfaces of image production.
Maaike Neuville graduated from Studio Herman Teirlinck in Antwerpen in 2005. Her career enjoyed a flying start, with parts in short and feature films. She has appeared on stage with various theatre companies and is also a well-known television actress. In 2010 she went behind the camera for the first time and made her first short film Way Back. This led to an invitation to the Talent Campus at the Berlinale. In 2013 she made Sonnet 81, which won several prizes and is still shown at festivals worldwide.
Director Filmographies
Eva Giolo: Becoming Landscape (2023), The Advantage of Lying On The Floor (2023), Silent Conversations (2023), The Demands of Ordinary Devotion (2022), Flowers blooming in our throats (2020)
Rebecca Jane Arthur: Barefoot Birthdays on Unbreakable Glass (2023), Colouring in (2023), Chantal in Green (2023), Hit Him on the Head with a Hard, Heavy Hammer (2023), Liberty: an ephemeral statute (2020)
Katja Mater: mostly makes film installations
Sirah Foighel Brutmann & Eitan Efrat: Is it a knife because… (2022), Miroir Séb Fragile ! (2017), Orientation (2015), Nude Descending a Staircase (2015), Printed Matter (2011)
Maaike Neuville: Mourning diary (2017), Sonnet 81 (2013), Way Back (2011)