Film

Channeling the noir-tinged visual style of Edward Hopper, Chantal Akerman’s unblinking camera prowls the corridors, rooms, and elevators of a seedy Manhattan flophouse. This silent, haunting study in stillness conjures a subtly eerie mood of melancholy and mystery.

A slow, circular pan across a small apartment is continuously repeated, with an occasional glimpse of a lone human figure: Akerman herself, staring impassively from her bed. That the filmmaker seems to disappear amid the claustrophobic clutter of her surroundings makes this early structuralist short a ghostly, unsettling self-portrait.