In Praise (or Not) of Chantal Akerman

"Golden Eighties" is kinda fun but ultimately inessential.
I got it on a twofer with "Toute une Nuit ("All Night Long"). First CA movie I saw. Fascinated me as a 17 yo but not sure whether I could sit through it these days.
"Rendez Vous d'Anna" is my favorite of hers. Rewatched it recently after 20 years or so and although I had forgotten most of the "story", i was amazed how the vibe had stayed with me all these years.

You're one Nuit, Anna, Golden Eighties is phenomenonal range of possibility.

Toute une Nuit

Can’t speak to whether it is “essential” or not but Golden Eighties is really charming, has a great cast and is there anything else like it in her filmography? Pascal Bonitzer contributed to the screenplay.

I feel like Tomorrow We Move is always absent from retros and the conversation about CA - it's essentially a screwball comedy, with Sylvie Testud as a chain smoking CA stand-in and Aurore Clement as her mom. I know there's that rom com she did with Juliette Binoche and William Hurt, afaik her only move in English. but Tomorrow We Move is really bittersweet and melancholy in a different way than any of her other movies.

I'll be seeing that one as well.

I am in the middle of a deep love affair with the facebook exchange flappy bird posted upthread.

🐐

I am pitching an Akerman pod to my Lodgers co host.

Yes!

...which is already turning into a meta project about the difficulty of completist cinephilia even before she approves it!

Chantal Akerman getting a Criterion Channel spotlight in June, including her hard-to-come-by musical GOLDEN EIGHTIES, which I’ve only seen sans subs pic.twitter.com/3TproQHd6Z

— Scott Nye (@railoftomorrow) May 20, 2020

That one rules.

ok guess ill do the free trial then

man, the Criterion Channel added some stuff I'd never seen (Golden Eighties).

do they have Les Annees 80 also? kind of an interesting companion

Temptation to subscribe...rising...

I will def be doing an Akerman series in the screening room if I keep it up a while.

And a slew of Dunye films I haven't seen.

i saw Golden Eighties last night in 35mm and was quite taken with it... a '50s Technicolor pastiche that manages to incorporate her mother's Holocaust experience.

Was Delphine Seyrig ever not All-World in anything? Heartbreaking.

― we can be heroes just for about 3.6 seconds (Dr Morbius), Thursday, February 25, 2016

Good to know, Simon, thanks. That means I can wait.

i saw Golden Eighties last night in 35mm and was quite taken with it... a '50s Technicolor pastiche that manages to incorporate her mother's Holocaust experience.

I MUST SEE THIS IMMEDIATELY 😭

Dunno how Seyrig keeps her cool, projects empathy, yet stays mysterious at the same time.

sort of a less 'royal' Jeanne Moreau

Was just thinking of her as well.

That means I can wait.

I think if I did Rendez vous D'Anna / d'Est (maybe?) / Golden Eighties / No Home Movie as the selections, that should be sufficiently head-spinning.

she's certainly antic in Blow Up My Town, esp for a Topic Omega film

haha she's hilarious in that short

yeah Simon that triple feature sounds great

Le Chambre is way too fucking large

goddamnn 1971 NY living spaces

I found Golden Eighties a strange marvel. Its use of the demotic in musicals reminds me of what Woody Allen tried to do in 1996

Would have been her seventieth birthday today.

fuck

Taken from a Slate piece posted two weeks ago--glad I didn't come across it until after tonight's Mrs. America finale. The final shot: Phyllis Schlafly on the right, after not getting the Reagan cabinet appointment she was expecting (not sure how historically accurate that is).

http://compote.slate.com/images/6bf9c811-0fc4-4a8d-92f0-a0c15bd71c27.jpeg?width=780&height=520&rect=780x520&offset=0x0

that's pretty funny

Jeanne Dielman is the fourth ever number 1 in the best movie poll

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Dielman,_23_quai_du_Commerce,_1080_Bruxelles

https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/greatest-films-all-time

oh there's another discussion. sorry

Akerman has long been a blind spot for me, perennially on the "I'll get to her" list, partly because she seemed like kind of a heavy lift. Before today, I'd only seen the short La Chambre and, for whatever reason, Golden Eighties — which I liked a lot but also knew was not exactly representative. Anyway, I decided to start the new year by finally watching Jeanne Dielman, no doubt one of many thousands goaded into it by the Sight & Sound ranking. And yeah, obviously great. As a newbie I won't belabor the thread with thoughts about it, except to say that it made me wish we had a Jeanne Dielman for every decade and every country or culture — a detailed inquisition of domestic routine and ritual.

So I guess News From Home is next, huh?

Not necessarily, it's too closely bound-up. I'd go for D'Est.

Les rendez-vous d'Anna is another great entry point

I think they're all on Criterion, maybe I'll just binge Akerman all January.

I tried to spread them out over a period of time, as Morbs advised with Hong Sangsoo

Hotel Monterey is very hypnotic and is one of my favorite films of hers, but it is silent. Maybe you could provide your own soundtrack, but I don't think most soundtracks could possibly represent this film. The images portraying the strangeness of the hotel foreshadow The Shining. The camera doesn't start moving around until the end

x-post

I paired Hotel Monterey with Eno’s Discreet Music some years ago and it worked supremely well.

Try The Captive, tips.

I would not recommend trying The Captive at this early stage

He's watched Jeanne Dielman. Might as well.

OK, I would not recommend trying The Captive at any stage

Lol I think it was my first by her. It was good but I don't think I read the source material.

Watch Hotel Monterey silent at least once before you play any music over it.

Respect.

https://cinephilecity.com/2015/09/10/theatrical-experiences-akerman/

otm

“If Michael knew … if he knew how his art was being treated … I think he will die! If he saw this, he would die here.”

When TIFF and the Art Gallery of Ontario had a big Michael Snow retrospective, they screened all of his films but for some reason they only showed 'Rameau's Nephew' by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen one reel at a time, once a week. I met him in the gallery and asked why, and he seemed puzzled by their choice but not too annoyed. Fortunately they screened the whole film at once several months later.
I hadn't realized until now that Akerman appeared in the film!