A Nos Amours (film collective)

The first screening was given in a pop-up space, in a disused and unheated shop in a cold London winter of 2011. The film screened was Maurice Pialat's Á Nos Amours. The film (which translates as To Our Loves) provided a name for the project.^[3]

Their most substantial project has been a retrospective of the films and videos of the Belgian film-maker Chantal Akerman, presented in London and across the UK, with Akerman's participation in person at a number of the events.^[4][1] The retrospective was spread across two years, beginning on 26 November 2013, and concluding on 30 October 2015, with the films presented chronologically.^[5] The retrospective was comprehensive, including all of Akerman's films, for cinema and for TV. No other retrospective has been able to do this, before or since. 22 of the films were translated and subtitled into English for the first time.^[6][7][8]

A mid-retrospective symposium was attended by Akerman, participating in an extended Q&A and audience discussion.^[9]

The final film in the retrospective however was tragically a posthumous screening, the UK premiere of No Home Movie, Akerman's last completed film, shown in London's Regent Street Cinema in the presence of Akerman's family and friends.^{[10][11][12][13]}

The retrospective has been credited, for example by Laura Mulvey in an article in Sight and Sound,^[14] with doing much to raise the profile and understanding of Akerman's work, and so, according to Mulvey, a likely factor in the selection of Akerman's feature film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai de Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles being voted Greatest Film of All Time in 2022 by critics and film-makers in BFI Sight & Sound's once-a-decade survey - which had previously been won by Orson Welles' Citizen Kane and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo.^[14]

A Nos Amours never settled in any one place, because A Nos Amours believed that cinema is produced by the moment of encounter with the audience, and the audience matters more than the venue.^{[citation needed]}

Venues have included unheated vacant commercial premises, the largest Xtreme screen at Vue Westfield in Stratford, London,^[15][16] small community screens such as the Lexi,^[17] in Kensal Rise, or London's Close Up Cinema.^[18] Other regular venues have included ICA Cinema,^[19] Curzon cinemas^[20] and Ciné Lumière at the Institut français du Royaume-Uni.^[21]

A Nos Amours have toured film prints across the UK, such as for a series of screenings of a 35mm print of Bela Tarr's eight-hour film Sátántangó, in partnership with Scalarama.^[22]

A Nos Amours has collaborated with many other organisations, notably with Contemporary Films to release nationally Chantal Akerman's last film, No Home Movie,^[23][24] and Ambika P3 Gallery.

Screenings around the UK have been undertaken in collaboration with cinema chains, such as for a one-day only national release of Chantal Akerman's Je Tu Il Elle, in partnership with Picturehouse Cinemas and CAA Glasgow on 17 March 2015.^[24][25]

Screenings have invariably been introduced by those with specialist knowledge, such as artists, critics and scholars, or else those with extraordinary understanding or passionate interest.^[26] Some speakers had never before spoken in public. Volunteers were encouraged to present in this way and to programme work of their own.

Notable speakers have included Jacques Rancière, Laura Mulvey, Carol Morley, Will Self, Geoff Dyer, Deborah Levy, Olaf Möller,^[27] Julie Myerson, George Szirtes, Marina Warner, Gus Casely-Heyford, Terry Gilliam and Richard Ayoade.

Films have wherever possible been shown in their original format. Most screenings have been from 35mm prints or 16mm, though some have been shown digitally or from tape sources. Live cued subtitles have at times of necessity been projected onto the film image because no subtitled copy could be located. An example of flexibility of approach was a screening at the ICA Cinema on 30 May 2013, of Frost by Fred Kelemen, filmed in 1997, but which was still incomplete for legal reasons.^[28][29] Consequently, the director's own work copy, on 16mm film, was screened.^[30] The projector was placed in the auditorium so that the sound of the projector was audible, a decision intended to underline the provisional condition of the film.

At screenings, the audience has invariably been offered printed handouts, providing full credits and text either composed by A Nos Amours, or else extracting useful writing about the film on offer. The hand-outs provided for the Chantal Akerman retrospective screenings have been published in the Chantal Akerman Retrospective Handbook.^[31]

A Nos Amours has presented 59 screenings and events.{{subst:when?}} Screenings have explored the film work of canonical figures such as Peter Watkins, Andrei Tarkovsky, Robert Bresson; or have unearthed largely unseen films such as Straub & Huillets's Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach, 1968, Fred Kelemen's Frost;^[32] festival successes such as Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor's Leviathan (2012); or classic but relatively unseen films such as Sergei Bondarchuk's Voyna i mir (War and Peace, 196; 6-7)^{[clarification needed]}.