Chantal Akerman
| Chantal Akerman | |
|---|---|
| Born | Chantal Anne Akerman 6 June 1950 Brussels, Belgium |
| Occupation | Artist, film director, professor |
Chantal Anne Akerman (born 6 June 1950) is a Belgian film director, artist, and professor of film at the European Graduate School.[1] Akerman's best-known film, Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), broke new ground and still exemplifies a dedication to the ellipses of conventional narrative cinema.[citation needed]
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Early life [edit]
Akerman was born to an observant Jewish family in Brussels, Belgium. Her grandparents and her mother were sent to Auschwitz; only her mother came back. This is a very important factor in her personal experience. Her mother's anxiety is a recurrent theme in her filmography. Akerman claims that, at the age of 15, after viewing Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le fou (1965), she decided, that same night, to make movies. At 18, she entered the Institut National Supérieur des Arts du Spectacle et des Techniques de Diffusion, a Belgian film school. During her first term, however, Akerman chose to leave and make Saute ma ville, a thirteen-minute black-and-white picture in 35mm. She partially subsidized Saute ma ville from shares she sold on the Antwerp diamond exchange, procuring its remaining budget through her clerical work. In 1971, Saute ma ville premiered at the Oberhausen short-film festival.[2] That year, she moved to New York, where she remained until 1972.
At Anthology Film Archives in New York, Akerman was impressed with the work of Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, Canadian Michael Snow, and Andy Warhol. She states that Snow's La Région Centrale introduced her to the relations among film, time and energy.¹ Her 1972 feature Hotel Monterey and shorts La Chambre 1 and La Chambre 2 reveal the influence of structural filmmaking through these films' usage of long (extended-duration) takes. These protracted shots serve to oscillate images between abstraction and figuration. Akerman's films from this period also signify the start of her collaboration with cinematographer Babette Mangolte, the director of photography on Jeanne Dielman.
In 1973, Akerman returned to Belgium and in 1974 received critical recognition for her feature Je tu il elle. In 1991, she was a member of the jury at the 41st Berlin International Film Festival.[3] In 2011, she became a Visiting Distinguished Professor in the Film/Video Program of the City College of New York.
Identity aesthetics [edit]
According to the book Images in the Dark by Raymond Murray, Akerman refused to have her work ghettoized and denied the New York Gay Film Festival the right to screen Je tu il elle. "I will never permit a film of mine to be shown in a gay film festival."
Filmography [edit]
| Year | Title | Length | Notes | English |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1968 | Saute ma ville | 13 minutes | Blow up My Town | |
| 1971 | L'enfant aimé ou Je joue à être une femme mariée | 35 minutes | The Beloved Child, or I Play at Being a Married Woman | |
| 1972 | Hotel Monterey | 65 minutes | ||
| 1972 | La Chambre 1 | 11 minutes | The Room, 1 | |
| 1972 | La Chambre 2 | 11 minutes | The Room, 2 | |
| 1973 | Le 15/8 | 42 minutes | co-directed by Samy Szlingerbaum | |
| 1973 | Hanging Out Yonkers | 90 minutes | unfinished | |
| 1974 | Je tu il elle | 90 minutes | I... You... He... She... | |
| 1975 | Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles | 201 minutes | ||
| 1976 | News from Home | 85 minutes | ||
| 1978 | Les Rendez-vous d'Anna | 127 minutes | Meetings with Anna | |
| 1980 | Dis-moi | 127 minutes | Tell Me | |
| 1982 | Toute une nuit | 89 minutes | All Night Long | |
| 1983 | Les Années 80 | 82 minutes | The Eighties | |
| 1983 | Un jour Pina à demandé | 57 minutes | One Day Pina Asked Me | |
| 1983 | L'homme à la valise | 60 minutes | The Man With the Suitcase | |
| 1984 | J'ai faim, j'ai froid | 12 minutes | segment for Paris vu par, 20 ans après | I'm Hungry, I'm Cold |
| 1984 | New York, New York bis | 8 minutes | lost | |
| 1984 | Lettre d'un cinéaste | 8 minutes | Letter from a Filmmaker | |
| 1986 | Golden Eighties | 96 minutes | Window Shopping | |
| 1986 | La paresse | 14 minutes | segment for Seven Women, Seven Sins | Sloth |
| 1986 | Le marteau | 4 minutes | The Hammer | |
| 1986 | Letters Home | 104 minutes | ||
| 1986 | Mallet-Stevens | 7 minutes | ||
| 1989 | Histoires d'Amérique | 92 minutes | Entered into the 39th Berlin International Film Festival[4] | Food, Family, and Philosophy |
| 1989 | Les trois dernières sonates de Franz Schubert | 49 minutes | Franz Schubert's Last Three Sonatas | |
| 1989 | Trois strophes sur le nom de Sacher | 12 minutes | Three Stanzas on the Name Sacher | |
| 1991 | Nuit et jour | 90 minutes | Night and Day | |
| 1992 | Le déménagement | 42 minutes | Moving In | |
| 1992 | Contre l'oubli | 110 minutes | Akerman directed one short segment | Against Oblivion |
| 1993 | D'Est | 107 minutes | From the East | |
| 1993 | Portrait d'une jeune fille de la fin des années 60 à Bruxelles | 60 minutes | Portrait of a Young Girl at the End of the 1960s in Brussels | |
| 1996 | Un divan à New York | 108 minutes | A Couch in New York | |
| 1997 | Chantal Akerman par Chantal Akerman | 64 minutes | ||
| 1999 | Sud | 71 minutes | South | |
| 2000 | La Captive | 118 minutes | Collaboration with Eric de Kuyper | The Captive |
| 2002 | De l'autre côté | 103 minutes | From the Other Side | |
| 2004 | Demain on déménage | 110 minutes | Collaboration with Eric de Kuyper | Tomorrow We Move |
| 2006 | Là-bas | 78 minutes | ||
| 2007 | Tombée de nuit sur Shangaï | 60 minutes | segment for O Estado do Mundo | |
| 2011 | La Folie Almayer | Almayer's Folly |
Further reading [edit]
- Sultan, Terrie (ed.) Chantal Akerman: Moving through Time and Space. Houston, Tex.: Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston ; New York, N.Y.: Distributed by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, 2008.
- Schenker, Andrew (15 January 2010). "Eclipse Series 19: Chantal Akerman in the Seventies". Slant Magazine. Retrieved 23 August 2010.
References [edit]
- ^ Chantal Akerman Faculty Page at European Graduate School
- ^ Margulies, Ivone (1996). Nothing Happens. Durham and London: Duke University Press. p. 2. ISBN 0-8223-1723-0.
- ^ "Berlinale: 1991 Juries". berlinale.de. Retrieved 2011-03-21.
- ^ "Berlinale: 1989 Programme". berlinale.de. Retrieved 2011-03-11.
External links [edit]
- Chantal Akerman Faculty Page at European Graduate School (Biography, bibliography and articles)
- http://www.paradisefilms.be
- Chantal Akerman at the Internet Movie Database
- Artist's page in Artfacts.Net with actual major exhibitions.
- Interview with Chantal Akerman
- Screens of Film, Video, Memory, and Smoke by Ana Balona de Oliveira in Fillip
- Chantal Akerman, Professor in the Film/Video Program of the City College of New York
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