Chantal Akerman par Chantal Akerman (Akerman, 1997):
ICA Cinema, 6.40pm
This screening is part of the Chantal Akerman retrospective presented by
A Nos Amours.
Tonight, two Chantal Akerman films from the late 1990s.
Chantal Akerman par Chantal Akerman (1996)
Commissioned as part of the series:
Cinéma, de notre temps
The legendary series of film-maker portraits curated by Janine Bazin
and André Labarthe offered Akerman a commission. She chose, entirely
consistently with her projects to date, to make a study of herself as
film-maker. Why not? She had turned film-making back on itself, and
discovered a feminised and ‘other’ sensibility, another way of seeing
the world and self.
Akerman delivers a monologue about her work and thinking. This is followed by a montage of clips from her work, including
Jeanne Dielman,
Saute ma Ville,
Hotel Monterrey,
Histoires d'Amerique,
Toute une nuit,
Portrait d'une jeune fille de la fin des années 60 à Bruxelles,
Les années 80 and so on.
Akerman closes with a simple statement of fact, without biographical adornment: "I was born in Brussels, that’s the truth."
Chantal Akerman par Chantal Akerman, dir. Chantal Akerman, 1996, 63 mins
Sud (South) (1999)
Inspired by a love of the literature of William Faulkner and James
Baldwin, Akerman planned a meditation on the American South, modeled
perhaps on her prior
D’est. But, just as she began work, James
Byrd, Jr. was murdered in Jasper, Texas. A black man, he has severely
beaten by three white men, chained to their truck, and dragged three
miles through a black neighborhood.
Akerman’s engagement is not news reportage. Jasper, the context for
the crime, must be scrutinised. Patient interviews reveal the people and
their attitudes. Byrd's funeral is a moment of deep feeling.
This is a film that finds an alternative to the forensic investigation of
In Cold Blood.
This is a film that evokes a terrain, the folds of a psychological
condition, the cold heart of white supremacism and the extraordinary
nobility of the black community under attack.
Perhaps it is Akerman’s sense of exclusion, stemming from her
family’s experience of the Holocaust, that enables her to see in this
way.
Akerman has written:
How does the southern silence become so heavy and so
menacing so suddenly? How do the trees and the whole natural environment
evoke so intensely death, blood, and the weight of history? How does
the present call up the past? And how does this past, with a mere
gesture or a simple regard, haunt and torment you as you wander along an
empty cotton field, or a dusty country road?
Sud, dir. Chantal Akerman, 1999, 71 mins
