March 7th: Chantal Akerman

During March, let’s watch films directed by women. There are no restrictions, however, I came up with a list of topics we can discuss each day throughout the rest of March. Every day we’ll discuss a different female filmmaker, except for every five days when there will be a theme. Threads and relevant lists will be created soon.
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March 7th: Chantal Akerman

Filmography (according to IMDB):

2011 La folie Almayer
2009 À l’Est avec Sonia Wieder-Atherton (TV documentary)
2008 Women from Antwerp in November (short)
2007 O Estado do Mundo (segment “Tombée de nuit sur Shanghai”)
2006 Là-bas (documentary)
2004 Demain on déménage
2003 Avec Sonia Wieder-Atherton (TV documentary)
2002/I De l’autre côté (documentary)
2000 La captive
1999 Sud (documentary)
1997 Cinéma, de notre temps (TV series documentary)
– Chantal Akerman par Chantal Akerman (1997)
1996 Un divan à New York
1994 Tous les garçons et les filles de leur âge… (TV series)
– Portrait d’une jeune fille de la fin des années 60 à Bruxelles (1994)
1993 D’Est (documentary)
1993 Monologues (TV series short)
– Le déménagement (1993)
1991 Contre l’oubli (segment “Pour Febe Elisabeth Velasquez, El Salvador”)
1991 Nuit et jour
1989 Histoires d’Amérique
1989 Trois strophes sur le nom de Sacher (short)
1989 Les trois dernières sonates de Franz Schubert
1986 Golden Eighties
1986 Seven Women, Seven Sins (segment “Portrait d’une Paresseuse”)
1986 Letters Home
1986 Mallet-Stevens (short)
1986 La paresse (short)
1986 Le marteau (short)
1984 Paris vu par… vingt ans après (segment 1 “J’ai faim, J’ai froid”)
1984 Family Business: Chantal Akerman Speaks About Film (TV short)
1984 New York, New York bis (short)
1984 J’ai faim, j’ai froid (short)
1984 Lettre d’un cinéaste: Chantal Akerman (TV short)
1983 Les années 80
1983 L’homme à la valise (TV movie)
1983 Un jour Pina m’a demandé (TV documentary)
1982 Toute une nuit
1980 Dis-moi (TV movie)
1978 Les rendez-vous d’Anna
1977 News from Home
1976 Je, tu, il, elle
1975 Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (as Chantal Anne Akerman)
1973 Hanging Out Yonkers
1973 Le 15/8 (short)
1972 La chambre (short)
1972 Hôtel Monterey
1971 L’enfant aimé ou je joue à être une femme mariée (short)
1968 Saute ma ville (short)

Ranked list: http://mubi.com/lists/19452
Link to the complete schedule.

i haven’t seen nearly as many films from her as i want to yet…d’est is a knockout and i was literally hallucinating for hours the other day after watching news from home…my train commute became a window-framed series of poetic editing problems instead of/as well as/related through travel…utterly delicious…

it would be nice if someone who has worked their way through most of the above could highlight all the gobsmackers…(here, with explications…as well as ally’s ranked list)

Sounds good Ally. I have at least one of her movies to watch, and a free mubi in the cart.

i put on La Chambre last night, and it summed up a lot of what frustrates me with akerman sometimes: it’s a great idea (a panoramic, constantly panning still-life) but somehow it just fails to live up to its own promise. if it had been an eleven-minute still shot of akerman eating the apple in bed, i probably would have found it more interesting, or at least possibly more than the sum of its parts (well… part). i don’t know if i’m gonna have the time for a full feature tonight, but i’m gonna try and get in Jeanne Dielman Etc Etc after work — something i remember loving the first time i saw it — and see if it bears out my suspicions of being more engaged by, for lack of a better term, populated stillness.

SPOILERS ALERT!

I have only seen Jeanne Dielman and Les Rendez Vous d’Anna, and I don’t have too many negative comments to make, although I will say certain things occur in her films that simply strike me as random, if not out of place, like the murder at the end of Jeanne Dielman. I’m not saying it was a bad film, and I understand the act was a reaction and result of her frustration with the mundane nature of her daily life, but perhaps the random nature of many of the moments in her films is deliberate.

it struck me less as random and more as the biggest, brightest neon symbol of how little akerman actually lets us into what we’re seeing — whereas most films at least try and feign that the viewer is a participant, someone complicit in the action by privilege of understanding characters’ motives, backstories, and other benefits of omniscient perspective, Jeanne Dielman shuts us out and shuts us out. we’re not even really voyeurs, we’re just observers, given the same tools and capacity for judgment as a camera lens.

that might be my real problem with engaging with La Chambre — clearly, documenting the details of that room in 1972 was documenting the details of akerman’s LIFE at the time of creation. but it just doesn’t mean anything to me. however significant those objects and placements were/are for her, to me they’re just chairs and a teakettle, you know?

and again, the idea of such intensely personal filmmaking appeals to me on a conceptual level, but in actually sitting down and watching it — at least in the case of La Chambre — it just doesn’t braid with my brain right.

@ sweet smell of sensati​onal somehow it just fails to live up to its own promise.

One could say her career fails to live up to the expectations left behind by Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.
Apparently she feels the same way, having said the following about Jeanne Dielman in a January 16, 2009 NYT phone interview:
I sometimes think I should have made it after many other films, at the end of my career.

Je Tu Il Elle is also very much worthwhile as it features Chantal herself.

Well, I don’t like films that are slow, so sometimes Jeanne Dielman gets on my nerves. However, les rendez-vous d’Anna was my favorite and there was something too it. Even though her short Saute ma ville is great (short & sweet), I really think that J’ai faim, j’ai froid was a great short and pretty interesting. I don’t want to give away spoilers either, but it’s about girls that are out on a double date. Either the guys are slackers or the girls are a little bit demanding. It’s really cute.

I saw Toute une Nuit a long while ago and remember it as being extraordinary – concentrated, unsettling and hallucinatory.

Caught up with Je Tu Il Elle recently and loved it; Chantal’s performance adds so much to it, and makes you feel it’s a shame she didn’t act in more of her own films. Disquieting, but also strangely uplifting.

A very hard to find highlight is Portrait of a young Girl in the Late Sixties in Brussels: very affecting, funny, beautifully judged, unlike anything else of hers I’ve seen – almost in Eric Rohmer territory!

I’m glad I found this thread. I need an idea of my next Eclipse series article on CriterionCast.com and this fits perfectly so I will watch and write a review of Je Tu Il Elle this weekend, to be posted on Monday 3/14.

Thanks for recommending J’ai faim, j’ai froid. Regarding Jeanne Dielman – Im thinking the film is supposed to get on your nerves.. but of course not in the way that makes you want to leave. To me it owes just as much to the photography of the great Babette Mangolte, as the suppressed performance of Seyrig and stubborn direction of Akerman.

Further I agree, Rendevouz d’Anna is a great journey. Also I would recommend Hotel Monterey, but only if you find pleasure in the consumption of stasis. Its almost a structural film.