Happy Birthday, Chantal Akerman! Born today in 1950 as Chantal Anne Akerman, this Belgian artist, screenwriter and film director was also a film professor at the City College of New York.
As a child, Akerman was especially close to her mother, a Holocaust survivor from Poland, who encouraged her to pursue a career.
As a teenager in Brussels, Akerman skipped school to see movies, including films from the experimental festival in Knokke-le-Zoute.
This relationship between mother and daughter, as well as the daily, intimate lives of women, greatly influenced her filmmaking.
At the age of fifteen, Akerman's viewing of Jean-Luc Godard's 1965 French/English/Italian drama/romance crime comedy film 'Pierrot le fou' inspired her to become a filmmaker.
Akerman's first short film, the silent thirteen-minute 1968 Belgian black and white drama/short film 'Saute ma ville' ('Blow Up My Town'), premiered at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen in 1971. It told of a young woman (Akerman) who shuts herself away in her apartment and goes about her business.
Later hat same year, Akerman moved to New York City, New York, where she would stay until 1972.
She considered her time there to be a formative experience, becoming exposed to the works of Andy Warhol ('Vinyl'), Lithuanian-American filmmaker, poet, and artist Jonas Mekas, and Michael Snow ('Wavelength').
This was with the latter's three-hour 1971 Canadian documentary/experimental film 'La région centrale' leading to her view of "time as the most important thing in film."
Akerman cites Snow as a structuralist inspiration, especially his forty-five minute 1967 Canadian/American experimental/indie film 'Wavelength', which is composed of a single shot of a photograph of a sea on a loft wall, with the camera slowly zooming in. Akerman was drawn to the perceived dullness of structuralism because it rejected the dominant cinema's concern for plot.
Also during this period, Akerman would begin her long collaboration with French cinematographer, film director, and photographer Babette Mangolte.
Akerman’s first feature film, the silent 1972 Belgian/American documentary film 'Hotel Monterey', along with the eleven-minute films 'La Chambre 1' and 'La Chambre 2', use long takes and structuralist techniques which would become trademarks of her style.
Akerman then returned to Belgium, and in 1974 received critical recognition for her first fiction feature. This was with the French/Belgian drama/LGBT film 'Je, Tu, Il, Elle' ('I, You, He, She'), notable for its depiction of women's sexuality, a theme which would appear again in several of her films.
American scholar; critic of independent, Latin American, documentary, feminist, and queer films; and a professor emerita of Film & Digital Media and Social Documentation at UC Santa Cruz B. Ruby Rich believed that 'Je Tu Il Elle' can be seen as a "cinematic Rosetta Stone of female sexuality".
Among her credits, Akerman is best known for writing and directing her most critically-acclaimed feature. This was with the 1975 Belgian/French drama film 'Jeanna Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles' (more commonly known simply as 'Jeanne Dielman').
With a runtime of almost four hours, Jeanne Dielman (Delphine Seyrig), the widowed mother of a teenage son, Sylvain (Jan Decorte), ekes out a drab, repetitive existence in her tiny Brussels apartment.
Jeanne's days are divided between humdrum domestic chores -- shopping, cooking, housework -- and her job as an occasional prostitute, which keeps her financially afloat.
She seems perfectly resigned to her situation until a series of slight interruptions (i.e. the overcooking of potatoes) in her routine leads to unexpected, dramatic (and deadly) changes.
Upon its release, French journalist and critic Louis Marcorelles called it the "first masterpiece of the feminine in the history of the cinema".
The film has since become a cult classic and was the 19th-greatest film of the 20th century in a critics poll conducted by The Village Voice.
'Jeanne Dielman' is now considered one of the most influential pieces in feminist film.
Akerman's works brought viewers into the most intimate moments of womens’ lives, highlighting the beauty and tension women experience in the most routine chores of life.
After establishing herself as a major film director with the 1975 French-Belgian black and white drama/LGBT film 'Je, tu, il, elle' ('I, You, He, She'), Akerman said that she "felt ready to make a feature with more money".
She later applied for a grant from the Belgian government for financial support, submitting a script that Jane Clarke described as portraying "a rigorous regimen [constructed] around food ... and routine bought sex in the afternoon".
This script would only be the rough basis for 'Jeanne Dielman' because after Akerman received the government grant of $120,000 and began production, she threw the script out and began a new film instead.
Akerman also explained that she was able to make a female-centric film because "at that point everybody was talking about women" and that it was "the right time".
Shooting 'Jeanne Dielman' took five weeks and Akerman called it "a love film for my mother. It gives recognition to that kind of woman".
Akerman used an all female crew for the film, which she later said "didn't work that well - not because they were women but because I didn't choose them. It was enough just to be a woman to work on my film ... so the shooting was awful".
Akerman further stated that "a hierarchy of images" that places a car accident or a kiss "higher in the hierarchy than washing up ... And it's not by accident, but relates to the place of woman in the social hierarchy ... Woman's work comes out of oppression and whatever comes out of oppression is more interesting. You have to be definite. You have to be".
The film depicts the life of the titular main character in real time, of which Akerman said "was the only way to shoot the film - to avoid cutting the action in a hundred places, to look carefully and to be respectful. The framing was meant to respect her space, her, and her gestures within it".
The long static shots ensure that the viewer "always knows where I am."
The film depicts the life of the titular main character in real time, of which Akerman said "was the only way to shoot the film - to avoid cutting the action in a hundred places, to look carefully and to be respectful. The framing was meant to respect her space, her, and her gestures within it".
The long static shots ensure that the viewer "always knows where I am."
Later on, it was also financially successful in Europe. Akerman was twenty-four when her film was screened at the event.
'Jeanne Dielman' was not released in the United States until 1983. Afterwards, the film was dubbed a "masterpiece" by The New York Times.
'Jeanne Dielman' was not released in the United States until 1983. Afterwards, the film was dubbed a "masterpiece" by The New York Times.
Akerman is also best known for writing and directing the 2000 French/Belgian drama/romance film 'La Captive' ('The Captive').
This French language film is loosely based off of French novelist, critic, and essayist Marcel Proust's posthumously-published 1923 fiction novel La Prisonnière (The Prisoner).
This French language film is loosely based off of French novelist, critic, and essayist Marcel Proust's posthumously-published 1923 fiction novel La Prisonnière (The Prisoner).
Suspecting that his girlfriend Ariane (Sylvie Testud) is bisexual, an obsessed man named Simon (Stanislas Merhar) follows her every move and demands complete submission.
American film director, screenwriter, painter, photographer, musician, and author Gus Van Sant ('Drugstore Cowboy', 'My Own Private Idaho', 'Elephant') later named 'Jeanne Dielman' an inspiration for his own similar films.
These were the 2002 American drama/independent film 'Gerry' and the 2003 American drama/crime film 'Elephant'. Both films were the first two installments of Van Sant's "Death Trilogy".
According to a report from the French daily afternoon newspaper Le Monde, Akerman passed on October 5, 2015 in Paris, France from suicide. She was 65.
It showed a series of conversations with her mother shortly before her mother's death; of the film, Akerman said: "I think if I knew I was going to do this, I wouldn't have dared to do it."
According to Akerman's sister, she had been hospitalized for depression and then returned home to Paris ten days before her death.
According to American scholar and filmmaker Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Akerman's influence on feminist filmmaking and avant-garde cinema has been substantial.
Akerman's works have been recognized in exhibits around the world, including the Museum for Contemporary Art in Antwerp, Belgium; MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts and the Centre George Pompidou, in Paris, France.
Through her films and the conversations they began, her influence on cinema and feminism live on.
However, Akerman was reluctant to be seen as a feminist filmmaker, stating that "I don't think woman's cinema exists".
According to multiple critics and film scholars, Akerman's influence on feminist and avant-garde cinema is substantial, with at least one scholar calling her "one of the most significant directors of our times.
Akerman's filming style relies on capturing ordinary life. By encouraging viewers to have patience with a slow pace, her films emphasize the humanity of the everyday.
Many of Akerman's films portray the movement of people across distances or their absorption with claustrophobic spaces. She addresses the voyeurism that is always present within cinematic discourse by often playing a character within her films, placing herself on both sides of the camera simultaneously.
Akerman also used the boredom of structuralism to generate a bodily feeling in the viewer, accentuating the passage of time.
Akerman was influenced by European art cinema as well as structuralist film. Structuralist film used formalist experimentation to propose a reciprocal relationship between image and viewer.
On May 14, 2018, being the date of the debut of 'Jeanne Dielman', a Google Doodle was created as a tribute to Akerman's life.
Akerman had been active from 1968–2015.
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