We are pleased to present an evening with leadingEuropean filmmaker Chantal Akerman, who is in town for the premiere ofher film and video installation, Bordering on Fiction: Chantal Akerman'sD'Est, at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in the context of theexhibition Public Information: Desire, Disaster, Document. Akerman'sfirst feature, made twenty years ago, is made up of three episodes,connected for the young protagonist (Akerman) as a process or journey,perhaps out of youth into adulthood, with all the discomfort that thatimplies. We find our heroine compulsively eating from a bag of brownsugar, writing and reading this aloud, rearranging furniture in her roomand stripping it bare. She goes on the road and has an encounter with ayoung truck driver who regales her with stories of his life and itsroutine. Finally, she comes to the home of a woman she loves; there is amood of estrangement but the women choose to make love rather than talkabout it. Systematically avoiding any close shots, Akerman leaves us,like her protagonist, effectively distanced from the intensity of theseexperiences. For Akerman, silence speaks louder than dialogue; who canforget the dinners chez Jeanne Dielman? There, as in Je Tu Il Elle,conversation breaks in on a meditation on solitude only to underline thealienation.