Still from “Flat Is Beautiful” by Sadie Benning 
Still from “Saute ma ville” by Chantal Akerman
Girl Trouble
Curated by Astria Suparak
For Pratt Film Series
@ Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY
February 24, 1999
PROGRAM
“Since the early ’70s, filmmaker Chantal Akerman has experimented with a blurring of cinematic hierarchies and an undulant, hypnotic approach to plot.” – Artforum, Nov 1998
J’ai faim, J’ai froid (I’m Hungry, I’m Cold), Chantal Akerman (France), 1984, film on video, b/w, 12 min.
Starring a young Maria de Medeiros (Henry and June, Pulp Fiction). Two young girls run away from home in Brussels. They spend a day in Paris looking for food and love, with comic and poignant results.
Saute ma ville (Blow Up My Town), Chantal Akerman (Belgium), 1968, film on video, b/w, 14 min.
Featuring the filmmaker in her first film, aged 18. A young woman comes home to her apartment in Brussels, where she cooks pasta and seals herself in with duct tape. Story ends with a bang.
Flat Is Beautiful, Sadie Benning (USA), video, 1998.
The pixelvision prodigy’s new major work. “Flat is Beautiful is an experimental live-action cartoon using masks, animation, subtitles, drawings, and dramatic scenes to investigate the psychic life of an androgynous eleven-year-old girl. Growing up in a working class neighborhood with her single mother and gay roommate, Taylor confronts the loneliness of living between masculine and feminine in a culture obsessed with defining gender difference. Shifting between black and white film and grainy pixelvision video, Flat is Beautiful explores the internal and external worlds of sad people.” – VDB catalogue
Astria Suparak 