Belgium’s greatest filmmaker ever is a Jewish woman and (as some of her films make explicit) a lesbian. This is Chantal Äkerman, whose masterpiece, D’Est (1993), I named one of the ten best films ever in my 100 Greatest Films List.      For a spell, Äkerman lived in New York City, where she made, at a […]

Shot in a New York City hotel, Belgian minimalist Chantal Äkerman’s Hotel Monterey coolly, compassionately observes in perfect silence. Until the documentary’s final movement, the shots are static and close to claustrophobic. The hotel’s residents are half a century older than Äkerman, whose camera captures solitary existences whose most social occasion appears to occur when […]