# Claire Atherton

Claire Atherton is a film editor. In 2019, she received the Vision Award Ticinomoda on the occasion of the 72nd edition of the Locarno International Film Festival, becoming the first woman to receive the award.

## Biography

She was born in 1963 in San Francisco, U.S. She grew up in New-York, then in Paris. She now works and lives in France. She is the sister of Sonia Wieder-Atherton.
Attracted very young by Taoist philosophy and Chinese ideograms, she spent a few months in China in 1980, at the Institute of Foreign Language in Beijing. Then she enrolled at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations in Paris.
Atherton had her first work experience in 1982, in Centre Audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir in Paris where she worked as video technician. In 1984, she enrolled in the professional branch of the École Nationale Supérieure Louis-Lumière in Paris from which she graduated in 1986. She then started to work on sound and image for some of the productions of Centre Simone de Beauvoir and various other projects. From the 1990s onwards, Atherton started to mainly focus on film editing.
She met with Chantal Akerman in 1984 on the occasion of the theater adaptation of Letters Home: Correspondence 1950-1963 by Sylvia Plath which was played by Delphine Seyrig at the Petit théâtre de Paris. Seyrig asked Akerman and Atherton to film the performance
This episode marked the beginning of a 31-year collaboration between the filmmaker and the film editor, first behind the camera and then on film editing. Atherton worked with Akerman on her documentaries, fictions and installations, up until No Home Movie and NOW, an installation which was presented at the Venice Biennale in 2015.
Nowadays Atherton is in charge of the conception and spatialization of Akerman's installations, which are presented on the occasion of exhibitions in the entire world.
Atherton also works with many other filmmakers and artists. Among them are Luc Decaster, Emilio Pacull, Noëlle Pujol, Andreas Bolm, Emmanuelle Demoris, Elsa Quinette, Christine Seghezzi, Christophe Bisson, Olivier Dury and Éric Baudelaire and many others.
In 2013, the Cinémathèque de Grenoble, France, organized an event dedicated to Atherton's work as film editor. It's the first retrospective dedicated to the body of work of an editor.
She is often invited to give master classes with young filmmakers during workshops in France and internationally. She also teaches in cinema and art schools such as La Fémis and at the HEAD School in Geneva, Switzerland.
In 2019, she received the Vision Award Ticinomoda on the occasion of the 72nd edition of the Locarno International Film Festival, becoming the first woman to receive the award which since 2013 "both highlights and pays tribute to someone whose creative work behind the scenes, as well as in their own right, has contributed to opening up new perspectives in film".

## Filmography
### Photography

* 1986: Femmes et Musique, production of Centre audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir (first assistant camera).
* 1986: Rue Mallet-Stevens by Chantal Akerman (director of photography)
* 1986: Le Marteau by Chantal Akerman (director of photography)
* 1988: Histoires d'Amérique by Chantal Akerman (first assistant camera)
* 1988: L'institut du monde Arabe (first assistant camera)
* 1988: Marguerite Paradis by Chantal Akerman (director of photography)
* 1988: Notes pour Debussy by Jean-Patrick Lebel (first assistant camera)
* 1990: Igor by Jean-François Gallotte (director of photography)

## Installations

* 1995: Le 25$^e$ écran, an installation by Chantal Akerman
* 1998: Autobiography, selfportrait in progress, an installation by Chantal Akerman
* 2001: Woman Sitting After Killing, an installation by Chantal Akerman
* 2002: From the Other Side, an installation by Chantal Akerman
* 2002: A voice in the Desert, an installation by Chantal Akerman
* 2004: Marcher à côté de ses lacets dans un frigidaire vide, an installation by Chantal Akerman
* 2007: La Chambre, an installation by Chantal Akerman
* 2007: Je tu il elle, an installation by Chantal Akerman
* 2007: In the Mirror, an installation by Chantal Akerman
* 2008: Femmes d'Anvers en Novembre, an installation by Chantal Akerman
* 2009: Maniac Summer, an installation by Chantal Akerman
* 2015: NOW, an installation by Chantal Akerman
* 2019: Tu peux prendre ton temps, an installation by Éric Baudelaire
* 2020: Death Passed My Way and Stuck This Flower in My Mouth, installation d'Éric Baudelaire

## Exhibitions

* 2015: Chantal Akerman: NOW, Ambika P3, Londres, Oct. 30 - Nov. 6, 2015.
* 2016: Group show 'Imagine Europe: In search of New Narratives', BOZAR, Brussels, April 13 - May 29, 2016 (Chantal Akerman: D'Est).
* 2016: Chantal Akerman: Maniac Shadows, la Ferme du Buisson, Noisiel, Nov. 19, 2016 - Feb.19, 2017.
* 2017: Chantal Akerman: NOW et In The Mirror, Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris, Sept. 14 - Nov. 21, 2017.
* 2018: Group show 'Scenes from the Collection, Constellations', Jewish Museum, New York, 21 janvier - 31 juillet 2018 (Chantal Akerman: NOW, 2015).
* 2018: Group show 'Pedro Costa: Company', Contemporary art museum of Serralves, Porto, Oct. 19, 2018 - Jan. 29, 2019 (Chantal Akerman: Femmes d'Anvers en Novembre, 2008).
* 2018: Chantal Akerman: 'Tempo Expandido / Expanded Time', Oi Futuro, Rio, Nov. 26, 2018 - Jan. 27, 2019.
* 2018: Solo show of Chantal Akerman, MOCA, Toronto, Feb. 14 - May 12, 2019.
* 2019: Group show 'Defiant Muses: Delphine Seyrig and the Feminist Video Collectives in France (1970s-1980s)', Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid, Sept. 25 - March 23, 2019 (Chantal Akerman: Woman Sitting After Killing, 2001).
* 2020 : 'From the Other Side, Fragment', MUAC, Mexico, March 7 - April 19, 2020. Exhibition curated by Claire Atherton.
* 2020 : 'Chantal Akerman: Passages', Eye Museum, Amsterdam, June 1 - August 30, 2020.
* 2021: 'Chantal Akerman : From The Other Side', Galerie Marian Goodman Paris, December 7, 2021 - February 5, 2022. Artistic direction : Claire Atherton
* 2022: 'Chantal Akerman : STANZE Sul custodire il perdere', Casa Masaccio, February 26 - May 8, 2022. Artistic direction : Claire Atherton