D'Est

Most directors feel complimented, she has said, when viewers say they are not aware of passing time: ‘But with me, you see the time pass. And you feel it pass. You sense that this is time that leads towards death... I’ve taken two hours of [your] life.’

Chantal Ackerman was born in Brussels, Belgium in 1950, but now lives in Paris.

Ackerman’s first film, “Saute Ma Ville” (1968), pictured a domestic scene and was her debut as a feminist film maker.

Ackerman is aware of the viewpoint of the spectator and the passage of time. She uses time to create a sense of monotony and routine. She uses the camera angle to manipulate the way in which a viewer sees a scene.

FROM THE EAST retraces a journey from the end of summer to deepest winter, from East Germany, across Poland and the Baltics, to Moscow. It is a voyage Chantal Akerman wanted to make shortly after the collapse of the Soviet bloc "before it was too late," reconstructing her impressions in the manner of a documentary on the border of fiction.

By filming "everything that touched me," Akerman sifts through and fixes upon sounds and images as she follows the thread of this subjective crossing. Without dialogue or commentary.

In the strictest sense, From the East qualifies as a documentary because its subjects are real people; the segments of lives being played out on screen are actually happening. But there’s no artificial narrative applied — no characters; no quest, conflict, and resolution; no talking at all, in fact. Aside from some incidental dialogue that is never translated via subtitles, the film is wordless.

Instead, we get beautiful and very long tracking shots that encompass a landscape of faces or a location. The documentary format’s requisite talking heads are replaced with static shots of ordinary people in their homes. They never speak. There doesn’t need to be any explanatory dialogue. The faces tell a story just fine.

FUENTES:

• From The East. http://icarusfilms.com/new2003/from.html
• DVD Review: Chantal Akerman's From The East - Blogcritics Video. http://blogcritics.org/video/article/dvd-review-chantal-akermans-from-the/