Film

My Mother Laughs Prelude

2012 · 27m · Documentary

“My mother laughs prelude” is a performance from the book that Chantal made about her mother. In 2013, Akerman’s mother was dying. She flew back from New York to Brussels to care for her, and between dressing her, feeding her and putting her to bed, she wrote. She wrote about her childhood, the escape her mother made from Auschwitz but didn’t talk about, the difficulty of loving her girlfriend, C., her fear of what she would do when her mother did die. Among these imperfectly perfect fragments of writing about her life, she placed stills from her films. "My Mother Laughs" is both the distillation of the themes Akerman pursued throughout her creative life, and a version of the simplest and most complicated love story of all: that between a mother and a daughter.

Chantal Akerman

Self

• Chantal AkermanDirector
• Claire AthertonEditor

Release date

March 12, 2012

Status

Released

Original language

English

Runtime

27m

Genres

Documentary