Thorough Cleaning Triple Bill

<p>Thorough Cleaning Triple Bill<br /> Sunday 27 November | Doors 7pm | Admission Free</p> <p><em>Kate Millett parle de la prostitution avec des féministes</em>, 1975<br /> by Syn Guérin & Catherine Lahourcade (France, 20mins) TBC</p> <p><em>Saute ma ville</em>, 1968<br /> by Chantal Akerman (Belgium, 13mins)</p> <p><em>Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080, Bruxelles</em>, 1975<br /> by Chantal Akerman (Belgium, 201mins)</p> <p>Chantal Akerman’s <em>Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai Du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles</em>, recently subtitled in preparation for possible American release, is an ambiguous and difficult film but one that deserves serious consideration from both feminist and formalist critics. In presenting her portrait of a bourgeois Belgian housewife whose widowhood leads her to afternoon prostitution, Akerman elicits not only an intensely sensitive performance from Delphine Seyrig but startlingly contradictory responses from her audience as well. These responses of vehemence and passion and the film’s complex structure lead one to question Akerman’s politics and aesthetics. And such questions can only be answered in the context of the historiography and theory of women in the home: as workers who are essential in maintaining the capitalist system through production and reproduction, largely unrecognized and unpaid. The film raises further questions in terms of its contribution to the vital task of developing feminist art and feminist film language, providing a measure of how far we have come and of what remains undone…</p>