Adam Roberts

A book from A Nos Amours gathering up all the research and writing that went into making the London Chantal Akerman retrospective possible.

Between 2013 and 2015,  A Nos Amours presented in London a complete retrospective of the films of the celebrated film-maker Chantal Akerman. This was a complex and demanding project as rights and screening copies turned out to be widely scattered and difficult to access. The research needed to present this retrospective is offered in this book so that others may easily follow suit.

Also included are the texts, journalism and blogging that was offered to the audience as a means to engage with film-works that are at once radical, heterodox and, in many cases, little known. The book aims to be accurate and a reliable source of detailed information about the films.

Texts are included that provide invaluable insight, including by:

Raymond Bellour, Richard Brody, Ivone Margulies, Marion Schmid and Ginette Vincendeau.

Laura Mulvey has written an expansive foreword, surveying Akerman's achievement, making use of the book as an aide-mémoire for what stands as one of the astonishing bodies of work in all cinema:

"As a collage of writing of many different kinds, the Handbook crucially bears witness to the effect that Akerman has had on the film community, from her earliest movies until her last... The high quality of the texts included in the book are all a reminder of the way that her ‘cinematic’ qualities have advanced our understanding of film." (Laura Mulvey preface)

The Liberated Film Club—running from its birth to its death, 2016 to 2020—would guarantee a wide wing-span for critical conversation. Screening “Liberated film” (a loose category designed to scaffold the show), a guest would be invited to introduce a film; an audience seated to watch it through; but there’d be an interruption to that typical format. Neither the audience nor the guest would have any idea what film would be shown, and this anonymised format would invite broad and antagonistic perambulation on the what, the why and the how of film.

An interrogation of what we do when we sit in a cinema; a reckoning with the kind of posture we should assume when we frame a film for further talk. Playing with the various ways we should consider and reproach the institutions built around all of our cultures of making and the manners and methods of all of our cultures of consumption, the Liberated Film Club was a rare reflection on the act of reflection itself.

An anthology publication,
featuring contributions from
John Akomfrah;
Chloe Aridjis;
Dennis Cooper;
Laura Mulvey;
Chris Petit;
Mania Akbari;
Elena Gorfinkel;
Juliet Jacques;
Ben Rivers;
Dan Fox;
Sean Price Williams;
Adam Christensen;
Stewart Home;
Stephen Watts;
Tony Grisoni;
Gideon Koppel;
Astra Taylor;
Miranda Pennell;
Gareth Evans;
Adam Roberts;
Tai Shani;
Anna Thew;
Xiaolu Guo;
Andrea Luka Zimmerman;
William Fowler;
Athina Tsangari;
John Rogers;
Shama Khanna;
Shezad Dawood;
Damien Sanville;
& Stanley (& Winstanley) Schtinter.

(Eds.) Stanley Schtinter,
with Dominic J. Jaeckle
& Jon Auman

A collection of 12 essays written by academics, writers and thinkers, Moving Impressions: Essays on Art and Experience celebrates the artistic and cultural works which have inspired, and continue to inspire, this volume’s contributors as scholars, teachers, and writers. The chapters celebrate the ‘moving’ power - personal and political - of works which engage with questions of identity, race, self-and-other relations, and sexuality.

These highly personal chapters span a multitude of artists, particularly writers of colour, through exploration of their applications to neurodiversity, POC and LBGTQ+ communities, and feminism. Works explored are diverse in origin and heritage, spanning personal and political culture from South Africa to Trinidad, India to France, Nepal to The United Kingdom. These include autobiography, novels, short stories, plays, painting, sculpture, and film.

Essays by Rowland Abiodun, Stuart Bell, Amrita Dhar, Natalya Din-Kariuki, Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, Madhu Krishnan, Isabelle McNeill, Maryam Mirza, Adam Roberts, Laura Seymour, Kirsten Tambling, Emma Wilson.