No Home But Cinema: The Spaces of Chantal Akerman

This new video essay by writer and critic Jessica McGoff, traces the restless movement in the works of Chantal Akerman, where the concept of home is always slipping just out of reach.

While Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles remains Chantal Akerman’s most celebrated work, her cinema stretches far beyond that iconic kitchen. Her films map spaces that feel both intimate and uninhabitable, tethered to history yet unmoored from time. No Home but Cinema, a new video essay by writer and critic Jessica McGoff, traces Akerman’s restless movement through bedrooms and kitchens, city streets and borders, where the concept of home is always slipping just out of reach. In an era of mass displacement and digital alienation, Akerman’s films feel more vital than ever: cinema as an act of remembering, of inhabiting absence, and of lingering in the spaces we leave behind.