Chantal Akerman
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In My Room
The big question for film educators this summer is how to prepare for classes this fall. Some campuses will host all of their classes online; others, like mine, are figuring out a hybrid model, with some production classes held on the sound stages with careful social distancing, masks and lots of hand sanitizer. In the meantime, many of us have been figuring out ways to inspire our students to keep making film and videos, even within the confines of their bedrooms, apartments and family homes. Luckily, there’s an exciting history of projects that demonstrate the power of a small space. […]
by Holly Willis on Jul 7, 2020 -
“It’s a Pretty Unambiguous Condemnation of a New Age Answer to Life’s Problems”: Writer/Director Todd Haynes on Safe
With Todd Haynes’s classic Safe now streaming on Criterion Channel (and seeming utterly prescient in its concerns), we’re reposting our Summer, 1995 cover story: Larry Gross’s interview with Haynes. — Editor Todd Haynes, director of Sundance Grand Prize Winner Poison and the underground classic Superstar, was inspired to make his latest feature, Safe, by his visceral response to New Age recovery therapists who tell the physically ill that they have made themselves sick, that they are responsible for their own suffering. Carol White, played superbly by Julianne Moore, is an archetypally banal homemaker in the San Fernando Valley who one […]
by Larry Gross on Apr 2, 2020 -
International Film Festival Rotterdam 2019: “The Spying Thing”
In his introduction to “The Spying Thing,” a 20-title selection of espionage films that he curated with Gustavo Beck, long-time IFFR programmer Gerwin Tamsma goes back to the deep well of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) and finds in it a timely new metaphor. Jimmy Stewart’s wheelchair-bound peeping tom is now a 21st-century government or multinational corporation, collecting data from his neighbors without their knowledge or consent, constrained only by the length of his lens (technology) and by the walls of his apartment (the pesky rule of law that governs democracies and capital). Grace Kelly’s wealthy socialite, then, is the […]
by Darren Hughes on Apr 2, 2019 -
Remembering Chantal Akerman, 1950 – 2015
Director Chantal Akerman died three years ago today, and I wrote the following remembrance in the Filmmaker newsletter just a few days later but never posted it online. I wrote it from the Venice Biennale College Cinema, where I arrive again today. So, it seems fitting to remember Akerman once again by finally posting it here. (Photo above, taken on an 1MP digital camera at the Rotterdam Film Festival, 2001.) Here in Venice, on the small island of San Servolo, we were talking about Jeanne Dielman. Tom Quinn, one of the filmmakers attending the Biennale College Cinema, had included a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 5, 2018 -
“… the Way Someone Would Shoot a Film in an Architectural Magazine”: Gus Van Sant on Last Days
The below interview with Gus Van Sant originally appeared in our Summer, 2005 issue. The subject matter of Gus Van Sant’s new film, Last Days, appears on the surface to be the stuff of a sensationalistic movie of the week. A moody, confused, perhaps drug-adled rock star Blake (Michael Pitt) — who bears more than a coincidental resemblance to Kurt Cobain — wanders aimlessly through a dilapidated mansion just before his end comes. Van Sant’s two previous films, which form a loose trilogy with Last Days, were also torn from the headlines: Gerry was inspired by a newspaper article about […]
by Peter Bowen on Jul 5, 2018 -
25 Sentences
1. Inspired by a small pantheon of icons — Chantal Akerman, Jean-Luc Godard, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Ulrike Ottinger — I sought rage and radiance together. 2. In the 19th century, the light on the far edges of the magnetic spectrum was dubbed “invisible light.” 3. But then I returned to her films —those of Chantal Akerman — hunched over the computer, watching frame-by-frame, excerpting image after image to create grids, comparisons, my own small compositions. 4. By rearranging the coordinates of space and time, he — media artist Daniel Crooks — creates a city in perpetual evolution, its times and spaces offering up new […]
by Holly Willis on Sep 14, 2017 -
From the Kitchen to the Shower
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du commerce, 1080 bruxelles What are the films you lie about having seen ? A friend posed this question to me recently, and it’s a telling query. Not only about your own ethical barometer, but also about what films are deemed unmissable — and by default make you worthy of shame for not having made the time to watch them. For years, my dirty secret was that I had never seen Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. When I confessed this, the responses were of shock. It’s not just that Akerman was a […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Apr 13, 2017 -
Watch: Andrew Bujalski on Chantal Akerman and Je, Tu, Il, Elle
This is fun: Andrew Bujalski, who was a student of Chantal Akerman’s at Harvard, speaks before an Austin Film Society screening of Je, Tu, Il, Elle, recalling his initial, intimidating encounters with her and noting Jim Jarmusch’s debt to this film in particular.
by Filmmaker Staff on Sep 6, 2016 -
The Jerusalem (and Sderot) International Film Festivals 2016
The 33rd Jerusalem Int’l Film Festival celebrated the 30-year anniversary of Avanti Popolo (1986), directed by Rafi Bukai, with the premiere of a newly completed digital restoration. Now considered an Israeli classic, the film is set during the last days of the Six Day War. The story focuses on two Egyptian soldiers (played by two Palestinian actors) who are trying to get out of the Sinai desert war zone and back home to safety in Cairo. Unusual for an Israeli feature: the Arab soldiers are positioned as the central, sympathetic protagonists. Even more unusual: they ultimately join up with three Jewish […]
by Nina Menkes on Jul 18, 2016 -
What is a Video Essay? Creators Grapple with a Definition
Perhaps video essays are like pornography in that, as the saying goes, you know it when you see it. But what distinguishes a video essay from a short film and what are the ground rules for this relatively new form? Finally, how much creative leeway can a video essayist take with a filmmaker’s work without being disrespectful or misrepresentative? These questions arose last month when we published a video essay from Kevin B. Lee, chief video essayist at Fandor, about the spaces in Chantal Akerman’s final documentary, No Home Movie. Initially, Lee edited the video to music. But after receiving some complaints, including from the distributors […]
by Paula Bernstein on May 3, 2016
