CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 7/19/2026

Metrograph presents Collier Schorr signing ‘Writing a Letter: Akerman Ballet, Act 1’ followed by a screening of Chantal Akerman’s ‘Je tu il elle’ with joint introduction by Matt Wolf

Sunday, July 19, starting with a book signing at at 6:45 PM, Metrograph NYC presents author and photographer Collier Schorr for a special screening to accompany the publication of Writing a Letter: Akerman Ballet, Act 1, a document of Schorr’s work on a ballet inspired by Chantal Akerman’s Je tu il elle, which will be on sale in the lobby along with Akerman’s rapturously received, newly reprinted memoir, My Mother Laughs, also published by The Song Cave. The screening of Je tu il elle at 7:30 PM will be preceded by Schorr’s short film Scene 25, Heads to Camera Kissing (2022).

Akerman’s boldly minimalistic first feature stars the 24-year-old writer-director herself as a young woman who we see emerging from an existence of isolation. She hitches a ride with a truck driver with whom she has a sexual dalliance, before finally arriving at the home of a former lover, falling into her bed in a bout of joyous lovemaking which, depicted in real-time, is regarded as a landmark depiction of lesbian sex in cinema. “Filmed in an uncomfortably direct yet distanced manner,” Janet Bergstrom wrote in Sight & Sound, the boudoir scene “provided a startling new perspective on voyeurism, exhibitionism, and the woman’s image on screen."

Scene 25, Heads to Camera Kissing (Collier Schorr, 2022, 3 mins)

Je tu il elle (Chantal Akerman, 1975, 86 mins)

Distributor: Janus Films

Introduction by Collier Schorr & Matt Wolf and pre-screening book signing starting at 6:45pm on Sunday, July 19

Collier Schorr book launch, followed by 'Je tu il elle' screening
Sunday, July 19, 6:45 PM
Metrograph
7 Ludlow Street, New York
More info here.