Black Square presents: From the East

Void Micro Cinema is teaming up with GS Film Minds, a Winnipeg-based film education project founded by producer and educator Julia Sharipova, to bring a diverse and wide-ranging survey of world cinema to Winnipeg with the ongoing screening series Black Square.

The series' three-screening winter bloc concludes with Chantal Akerman's observational documentary From the East
From the EastDirected by Chantal Akerman1993 | Belgium, France, Portugal | 110 minutesFrom 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, From the East is a cinematographic elegy.New 2K restoration

"Monumental… Akerman's method uncannily draws the spectator in… The people and places of From the East may be unnamed, but they are not anonymous: Their images are indelible." —Melissa Anderson, Artforum
"A travelogue through history… Akerman has described this elegant masterpiece as 'documentary bordering on fiction'; it's also a purely cinematic monument in time and space." —J. Hoberman, The Village Voice

Screening copy courtesy of Icarus Films