Hanging Out Yonkers. 1972. Belgium. Written and directed by Chantal Akerman. DCP courtesy Janus Films. Silent. 27 min.
“Really beautiful” is how Chantal Akerman recalled this unfinished project “on young junkies in rehab centers outside New York.” The film’s surviving images—the soundtrack remains lost—suggest a Renaissance portrait by Bronzino, the centers’ burnt sienna walls enveloping these teenage men and women in their group therapy sessions and pastimes of pool playing and smoking with a noble serenity and comforting warmth.
Hôtel des Acacias. 1982. Belgium. Written and directed by the students of INSAS (Yves Hanchar, Pierre Charles Rochette, François Vanderveken, Isabelle Willems) under the supervision of Chantal Akerman and Michèle Blondeel. Digital restoration by Thaïs Play David at INSAS in collaboration with Royal Film Archive of Belgium — CINEMATEK and Fondation Chantal Akerman. In French; English subtitles. 43 min.
By all accounts, Chantal Akerman was an extraordinary teacher. Hôtel des Acacias, a forerunner to her musical comedy Golden Eighties (1982), is the product of a workshop she and the writer-actress Michèle Blondeel conducted with students at the Brussels film school, inviting them to contemplate the fickleness of love through a series of staged amatory escapades at a hotel.