In Praise (or Not) of Chantal Akerman

has this been shared before? really nice piece on the final shot in News From Home: http://reverseshot.org/features/2105/news_from_home

http://reverseshot.org/images/uploads/news2.jpg

Thanks!

on this week’s episode of triple d we’ve taken a road trip to scenic brussels where we visit a mother whose home cooking is the real deal. seriously, wait till you see this meatloaf. some come on & roll on out with me, guy fieri, on another diners, drive-ins & dives pic.twitter.com/uI0OZOK4Lq

— Nick Usen (@nickusen) January 27, 2019

oh my GOD

Je Tu Il Elle seems like one of the great first feature films by any director that I’ve seen, but is more difficult than most. It’s completely free-form and mysterious in a way that even Jeanne Dielman isn’t. Akerman wants to show you the external manifestation of something that is happening internally with the main character, but also avoids any kind of interpretation.

you have to bring a lot o your own experience and feelings into the events here to come up with any personal sense of what the film is about, it requires a big feat of projection

seemed like three distinct parts: the isolation in the room at the beginning, the experience with the truck driver, and the relationship with the other woman at the end

I see that one as Chantal quite not relaxing into her mode just yet. Only lasted a while before she masters everything.

loved News From Home

all those subway scenes and shots of wide 70s cars on 10th Avenue and cross streets looking out on the Hudson River

wasn’t sure what to make of Hotel Monterey, although I did like that the camera started moving halfway.through

I wish she got sound for that one. Anything.

the silence of that film made it feel very experimental but it was also hypnotic.

Unless my scan of the thread lied, it appears I never linked the memorial piece my genius friend Kate wrote for Cinema Scope shortly after Akerman's passing.

http://cinema-scope.com/columns/deaths-of-cinema/

really great, thanks

Hotel Monterey has no story, it’s just a black and white film document of a residential hotel in NY in 1973, featuring mostly elderly people, with no sound, starting in the lobby and moving in to the elevator and up to individual rooms (open doors, closed doors) to the roof and its views

also lots of shots of fluorescent-lit corridors.

I once synced Hotel Monterey with Eno’s Discreet Music and it was just about perfect.

I loved Les rendez-vous d'Anna

so many of the shots in it had the subject in the middle of the frame, with the sides of the frame mirroring each other. it felt like it really matched the anonymity and dissatisfaction of the narrative

have been watching her films over again and there haven't been any that seem like a throwaway

Finally found this screenshot of Chantal akerman on Facebook pic.twitter.com/8uyDF7rsT3

— alexander iadarola (@aliadarola) October 9, 2019

I loved Les rendez-vous d'Anna

Full retro happening in Toronto and I started with this. Bolstered by someone I briefly dated with the same name being in attendance. Great movie.

it was very enigmatic

Hoberman had a good review

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/movies/les-rendez-vous-danna-chantal-akerman.html

I love the repeated visual of revolving flashing lights from outside that are reflected in the room in Jeanne Dielmann and still wonder what it is supposed to mean, It didn’t seem like it could be from a nearby neon sign, more like it was police lights, maybe a foreshadowing of the ending

not really revolving so much as swinging back and forth

I think I also loved this because I have a deep emotional attachment to long aimless train rides

I was just thinking about this movie yesterday, it's been a while and I haven't thought about it much.
Was it a new DCP? a friend of mine in NYC saw it last year & I'm pretty sure it wasn't a print. I always forget it's in her Eclipse set.

has anyone seen Window Shopping / Golden Eighties? looks potentially awesome but I can't find it anywhere

it was a new "restored" DCP apparently

also have tix for:
Les Annees 80s
La Captive
and a double feature of Portrait d'une jeune fille de la fin des années 60 à Bruxelles and Chantal Akerman par Chantal Akerman

I've only seen La Captive and the self portrait. I haven't read the Proust book, but I couldn't get into it. Very formal, but not like her other films, like dud Chabrol. I was bored by it, though not as much as Almayer's Folly.

CA/CA is cool, it's a clip show w/o much manipulation iirc. it's not like Beaches of Agnes (unfortunately)

spurred on by tonight's viewing, I just also picked up tix for Golden Eighties, No Home Movies and Demain on Demenage. (I had vouchers to use up by year's end.)

I love the repeated visual of revolving flashing lights from outside that are reflected in the room in Jeanne Dielmann and still wonder what it is supposed to mean, It didn’t seem like it could be from a nearby neon sign

i looked into this last year but i forget if i found anything solid. since prostitution is legal in brussels i was wondering whether you were supposed to infer something about her work from her address - because of the name of the street i gathered that her building was in a commercial district (at least, no less of one than you see her walking through in the middle of the city) and figured the lights were neon signs.

"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.