Chantal Akerman at the MFA. ‘I Don’t Belong Anywhere’ is an iconic documentary

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston celebrates the life of the late French/Belgian/Jewish avant-garde filmmaker with By and About Chantal Akerman, a program comprised of two films produced during the final years of Akerman’s life.

Chantal Akerman at the MFA

I Don’t Belong Anywhere: the Cinema of Chantal Akerman (Icarus Films; dir. Marianne Lambert; Belgium, 2015, 67 min.). Filmed before Akerman’s death in 2015, this documentary explores some of the nomadic filmmaker’s 40 plus films and charts her international travels, exploring the cities and spaces that influenced her work. Akerman shares with Marianne Lambert her cinematic trajectory, one that never ceased to interrogate the meaning of her existence. In conversation with her editor and long-time collaborator, Claire Atherton, she discusses the origins of her film language and aesthetic stance. I Don’t Belong Anywhere includes excerpts from many films made throughout Akerman’s career, including Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), News from Home (1976), The Rendezvous of Anna, Je, tu, il, elle (1974), South (1998), From the East(1993), From the Other Side (2002), Là-bas (2006) and what would be Chantal Akerman’s last film, No Home Movie (2015).

No Home Movie (Icarus Films; dir. Chantal Akerman; France, 2016, 115 min.). For the last several years of her life, Chantal Akerman filmed her surroundings with no real direction or narrative in mind. When she had amassed about 20 hours of footage, she began to sculpt it slowly into a two-hour feature. The work that emerged from this process was No Home Movie, a film about the artist’s elderly mother who survived the Holocaust and now rarely left her Belgian apartment. This poignant film would be Akerman’s last.

Tickets may be purchased now at mfa.org/film, by calling the MFA Ticketing Line at 800.440.6975, or in person at any MFA ticket desk. Tickets are $9 for members, $11 nonmembers, and $5 for students at local universities.

The Ruth and Carl J. Shapiro Film Program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is funded by the Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family Foundation.

Film at the MFA is sponsored by Bank of America.

The Media Sponsor is The Boston Globe.