A fantastic resource: compelling philosophical insights and an indepth knowledge of Akermans oeuvre, paying attention to those better known works such as Jeanne Dielman alongside the less frequently explored later films. Accessible, erudite and enthusiastic. -- Ros Murray, Senior Lecturer in French, King's College London, UK Chantal Akerman loved the banal everyday: even when nothing happens, something happens, "little nothings" that are "the core of everything." In this humane and astute study, Andreja Novakovic examines the many ways in which Akerman attends to this little everyday core, and generously invites us viewers to pay attention with her. Novakovic gives us an expansive Akerman: serious, beautiful, boring, comic, tragic, daring. Drawing from across Akerman's worksher short films, narrative films, documentaries, memoirs, letters and interviewsand calling on an array of thinkersincluding Hegel, de Beauvoir, Heidegger, Silvia Federici, Angela DavisNovakovic develops a reading of Akerman as an artist of enormous range, both engaged with philosophical questions about the nature of work, gender, home, desire, time, and committed to the pleasures, and frustrations, of watching human beings projected and illuminated on screen. Novakovic's book achieves what any great book on film should do: send us back to the screen, to watch, and watch again, with fresh resources and new questions. * Francey Russell - Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Barnard College and Columbia University *
