La chambre

e-flux and the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen are pleased to present Chantal Akerman’s La chambre, the fourth film in the joint series From My Window / From Your Window.

Two 360° traveling shots describe the space of a room as a succession of still lives: a chair, some fruit on a table—solitary, waiting objects. Glimpsed within these movements, one sole presence: a young women sitting on a bed. The third shot stops in mid-course, to reverse its movement and reframe the young woman who is eating an apple.

In Chantal Akerman’s early short film La chambre, we see the furniture and clutter of one small apartment room become the subject of a moving still life—with Akerman herself staring back at us. This breakthrough formal experiment is the first film the director made in New York.