484, 1203 Chantal Akerman Masterpieces, 1968–1978

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Yojimbo
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Re: Jeanne Dielman (Chantal Akerman, 1975)

#51 Post by Yojimbo » Wed Feb 04, 2009 6:13 pm

foggy eyes wrote:
Yojimbo wrote:I have the Akerman box-set, although I haven't gotten around to watching 'Jeanne Dielman' yet
Save your first viewing for the theatre! There's a couple of screenings in London in March too, hopefully of this new print. Has it screened with an interval at Film Forum?
Just made my booking.
Its screening next Friday afternoon (13th), so I suppose even in these straitened times not enough people could get off to see it.
sidehacker wrote:I forgot all about "crowds" - which sounds like a joke, but whenever I vision myself watching this in a theater (which I will be in a couple of weeks) I think of it being completely empty. Unlikely, but what a blessing that would be! I just hope everyone else that attends knows what to expect. The crowd at my Ashes of Time viewing was pretty restless, and there's action and camera movements in that movie. Oh well, l'll just hope for the best.
speaking of 'uncultured' audiences I remember I was at a screening of 'Eyes Without A Face' about 10 years ago when two teenagers after spending most of the first 20 minutes splitting their sides laughing, eventually left, perhaps realising that I was about to thump them!

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Re: Jeanne Dielman (Chantal Akerman, 1975)

#52 Post by ZLow » Mon Feb 09, 2009 11:44 pm

Tonight at the Wexner Center in Columbus, Ohio, Criterion exec. producer Kim Hindrickson confirmed that “Jeanne Dielman” will be released this year (not a shocker, I know). She spoke a lot about films coming out in May, so we might be able to expect it as soon as then, but I'm not sure, obviously.

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justeleblanc
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Re: Jeanne Dielman (Chantal Akerman, 1975)

#53 Post by justeleblanc » Tue Feb 10, 2009 12:42 am

Aside from Marienbad, what other films are set for May?

Also, did she mention if only JD was coming, or if we could expect more Akerman down the road?

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Re: Jeanne Dielman (Chantal Akerman, 1975)

#54 Post by ZLow » Tue Feb 10, 2009 1:43 am

I'm assuming the Imamura set will be in May (don't know why they'd just do "Pigs and Battleships" then a set, unless they do individual releases too). I'm not positive about the Godard films she mentioned (Made in USA, 2 or 3 Things, and Vivre), she might have said one of those was due too.

As for Akerman, JD was the only film she mentioned.

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backstreetsbackalright
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Re: Jeanne Dielman (Chantal Akerman, 1975)

#55 Post by backstreetsbackalright » Fri Feb 20, 2009 5:09 pm

foggy eyes wrote:I sort-of-agree with Barmy, but would suggest that it is not so much a "lack" but a sustained application of variation (difference) that disrupts the process of repetition.
I'm no expert on structuralism, but wouldn't this also apply to Wavelength?

In any case, certainly Akerman's encounters with structuralism in New York were formative, and play a role in JD, but there's a good great deal more going on in this film than Akerman reacting to that movement. Films like Hotel Monterey, La Chambre, or even Je Tu Il Elle will those looking for a way to locate Akerman in relation to structuralism a lot more to chew on.

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King Prendergast
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Re: Jeanne Dielman (Chantal Akerman, 1975)

#56 Post by King Prendergast » Fri Feb 20, 2009 8:36 pm

It's "structural" film, structuralism is something altogether different.

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backstreetsbackalright
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Re: Jeanne Dielman (Chantal Akerman, 1975)

#57 Post by backstreetsbackalright » Sat Feb 21, 2009 3:07 am

King Prendergast wrote:It's "structural" film, structuralism is something altogether different.
Right. True. My bad.

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foggy eyes
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Re: Jeanne Dielman (Chantal Akerman, 1975)

#58 Post by foggy eyes » Sat Feb 21, 2009 8:10 am

backstreetsbackalright wrote:I'm no expert on structuralism, but wouldn't this also apply to Wavelength?
Much more so - I'd say that Wavelength (definitely a "structuralist" 16mm film work) is probably one of the least repetitive films ever!

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foggy eyes
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Re: Jeanne Dielman (Chantal Akerman, 1975)

#59 Post by foggy eyes » Mon Mar 16, 2009 8:41 am

Saw the new Janus 35mm print yesterday, and it looks incredible. The experience was only marred by the fact that some idiot in the U.S. had misplaced reel 2, so the end of the first day had to be projected from a ropey old 16mm print (in San Francisco, they got the DVD). The difference was like night and day.

Hopefully Criterion will reprint Ben Singer's 1989 essay Jeanne Dielman: Cinematic Interrogation and ‘Amplification’ (Millennium Film Journal 22, 56-75) in the booklet - it's one of the best, and most accessible, pieces of rigorous formal analysis that I know of. Manny Farber & Patricia Patterson's Kitchen Without Kitsch (Film Comment 13.6, 1977, 47-50) would make a great counterpoint. They could be bundled together as "theory", just like the (great) Zavattini & Bazin pieces for Bicycle Thieves...

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Barmy
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Re: Jeanne Dielman (Chantal Akerman, 1975)

#60 Post by Barmy » Mon Mar 16, 2009 11:28 am

Couldn't they just do a MISSING REEL thing ala "Grindhouse"? lulz

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King Prendergast
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Re: Jeanne Dielman (Chantal Akerman, 1975)

#61 Post by King Prendergast » Mon Mar 16, 2009 10:28 pm

Hopefully Criterion will reprint Ben Singer's 1989 essay Jeanne Dielman: Cinematic Interrogation and ‘Amplification’ (Millennium Film Journal 22, 56-75) in the booklet - it's one of the best, and most accessible, pieces of rigorous formal analysis that I know of. Manny Farber & Patricia Patterson's Kitchen Without Kitsch (Film Comment 13.6, 1977, 47-50) would make a great counterpoint. They could be bundled together as "theory", just like the (great) Zavattini & Bazin pieces for Bicycle Thieves...
Or perhaps Claire Johnston's canonical article "Towards a Feminist Film Practice: Some Theses," reprinted in Movies and Methods, Vol. II, which makes some important claims about the formal construction of the film and how it relates to 70s Screen theory. For instance:
Chantal Akerman’s film is important for feminism because it resolutely refuses to present us with the security of the reverse shot of classic representation and instead foregrounds the “thetic” aspect of the field of vision, the Symbolic Order, in all its harshness on the body of the woman as other, woman as non-male. In so doing it reveals the fragility of such a Symbolic Order by the over-inscription of absence and by the inscription of the drives as “elsewhere.” The film’s inscription of the asymmetry opens up the possibility of a different Symbolic order, a different mode of articulation between the Imaginary and the Symbolic beyond the frame, the diegesis and our field of vision –but nevertheless present
Or perhaps commission a new piece from Ivone Margulies who literally wrote the book on Akerman, the best of the lot, Nothing Happens: Chantal Akerman's Hyperrealist Everyday (Duke University Press, 1996), which I highly recommend.

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foggy eyes
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Re: Jeanne Dielman (Chantal Akerman, 1975)

#62 Post by foggy eyes » Tue Mar 17, 2009 11:00 am

King Prendergast wrote:Or perhaps Claire Johnston's canonical article "Towards a Feminist Film Practice: Some Theses," reprinted in Movies and Methods, Vol. II, which makes some important claims about the formal construction of the film and how it relates to 70s Screen theory.
I'll have to read this. There's also a very interesting (and balanced) chapter devoted to the film in Judith Mayne's The Woman at the Keyhole. Margulies' book is great, and (like Singer's article) extends far beyond "essentialising function of shot/reverse-shot"-type ideological mush into more concrete issues of narrative, genre, (hyper)reality, materiality, phenomenology (etc.) that most feminist analyses seem to wilfully ignore...

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King Prendergast
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Re: Jeanne Dielman (Chantal Akerman, 1975)

#63 Post by King Prendergast » Tue Mar 17, 2009 2:36 pm

Let's be careful to historicize these critical responses. Johnston's article is from the mid-70s, the height of post-structuralist/feminist-inflected suture theory. Now if you want to consider that "ideological mush" and take a Bordwellian, post-Theoy, approach that's fine, but one must recognize the importance of these Lacanian readings which went a long way towards legitimating film studies in humanities departments during the 1970s. Margulies' book is brilliant, but she is writing after 20 years of intellectual development; she is able to engage in a broader range of subjects and methods, including, as you say, "more concrete" issues, but she is building on the more polemical work of feminists during the glory days of Screen and Camera Obscura. And as you note, the book displays tendencies of a certain "phenomenological turn" in film studies which we have seen in the last 15 years or so, but this is only after the paradigm-shifting work of Vivian Sobchack in The Address of the Eye, so criticizing Johnston of "willfully ignoring" such issues rings a bit hollow.

For a recent interview with Margulies see

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foggy eyes
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Re: Jeanne Dielman (Chantal Akerman, 1975)

#64 Post by foggy eyes » Wed Mar 18, 2009 6:36 am

Well, I did think "maybe I'm being a bit too harsh / needlessly reductive" (delete as appropriate) after I posted that! Not entirely sure about the result of the (unavoidable) "legitimisation of film studies" - possibly a case of one step forward, two steps back (especially when it comes to Lacanian theory).

Interview is great; thanks for the link.
When did you first meet?
Around the time that I was writing the proposal, Annette Michelson had invited me to Middleburry College watch all of Akerman’s films. I didn’t stay very long, I just went to watch the films, and that’s where I met her. If I said, “Oh, I admire your work,” her response was, “Go make a film.” She can be very direct. But she’s not someone who likes academics and she didn’t know what I was going to write so she was very skeptical and averse to the whole idea. The whole approach she had to American scholars wasn’t very positive.

In what sense?
Well, at that point, I think there was a very strong discourse about form and ideology. My problem was to bring up the formal issues in a way that I felt were not subservient to this feminist discourse, which I didn’t think was the main one to discuss. And some accused me of being a formalist.

Most academic film writing suffers precisely because it doesn’t pay attention to form.
I think so, too. My weakest work is when I try to discuss an idea without paying attention to the form. I don’t see the two as separate. Formalism for me is someone like Bordwell, who really is describing a shot; he’s so good at what he does, and it’s helpful. I’m not putting it down at all, but formalism ends there. You can’t be halfway. If you’re fully a formalist, you’re not just a formalist. There’s a way in which you need to return to the filmmaker, to what she is doing, and to be particular. I’m an auteurist in that sense; I think that people have their signature and that it cannot be forged. And that comes back to the idea of the long take, and questioning why are there people that are weaker at using it than others. And Akerman, too, is not always good. There are points where she seems almost Mannerist.

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Re: Jeanne Dielman (Chantal Akerman, 1975)

#65 Post by Dazza » Sat Mar 21, 2009 8:15 pm

Yojimbo, did you go to see this at the NFT last week? I saw it was on, but I can't believe it was on in NFT2 - hands-down the worst of the three main screens there (only one aisle... :roll:) , and for a film of that length I think that was a terrible choice for one, let alone both screenings.
Much as I'd like to see JD in a cinema, I had to pass on that chance, and in the end just bought the DVD.

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Re: Jeanne Dielman (Chantal Akerman, 1975)

#66 Post by foggy eyes » Tue Mar 24, 2009 12:53 pm

Dazza wrote:I can't believe it was on in NFT2 - hands-down the worst of the three main screens there (only one aisle... :roll:) , and for a film of that length I think that was a terrible choice for one, let alone both screenings.
Much as I'd like to see JD in a cinema, I had to pass on that chance, and in the end just bought the DVD.
It was well worth it - the difference (in level of detail and quality of light) between the DVD and new 35mm print is breathtaking. If another opportunity presents itself, don't miss out!

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Awesome Welles
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Re: Jeanne Dielman (Chantal Akerman, 1975)

#67 Post by Awesome Welles » Tue Mar 24, 2009 3:29 pm

foggy eyes wrote:
Dazza wrote:I can't believe it was on in NFT2 - hands-down the worst of the three main screens there (only one aisle... :roll:) , and for a film of that length I think that was a terrible choice for one, let alone both screenings.
Much as I'd like to see JD in a cinema, I had to pass on that chance, and in the end just bought the DVD.
It was well worth it - the difference (in level of detail and quality of light) between the DVD and new 35mm print is breathtaking. If another opportunity presents itself, don't miss out!
Unfortunately I missed the screenings but this will definitely be on again soon and I won't be missing the chance again. I can't imagine the experience of seeing this film in the cinema vs on DVD can be compared. Personally I don't mind NFT2, especially as virtually everything I see at the BFI is in that screen you kind of get used to it.


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Fierias
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Re: Jeanne Dielman (Chantal Akerman, 1975)

#69 Post by Fierias » Fri May 15, 2009 11:26 pm

please please please be a Blu-ray too. The new film print of this is one of the most gorgeous things I've ever seen.

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RodneyOz
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Re: 484 Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

#70 Post by RodneyOz » Sat May 16, 2009 1:31 am

The specs for this are great. I was already excited about this release, now I'm overjoyed.

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Re: 484 Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

#71 Post by denti alligator » Sat May 16, 2009 8:12 am

no Blu-ray? why not?

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TheGodfather
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Re: 484 Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

#72 Post by TheGodfather » Sat May 16, 2009 4:42 pm

Really looking forward to this one, the supplements sound excellent!

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zedz
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Re: 484 Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

#73 Post by zedz » Sat May 16, 2009 5:36 pm

TheGodfather wrote:Really looking forward to this one, the supplements sound excellent!
They are, as anyone who owns the Belgian Akerman set can attest: this looks pretty much like a direct port, with only a couple of possible minor exceptions (e.g. intro to Saute ma ville?) Shock! Horror! Criterion are doing another Benjamin Button!

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Fiery Angel
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Re: 484 Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

#74 Post by Fiery Angel » Sat May 16, 2009 6:36 pm

zedz wrote:Shock! Horror! Criterion are doing another Benjamin Button!
I thought the same thing when I saw the extras. 8-)

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Gregory
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Re: 484 Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

#75 Post by Gregory » Sat May 16, 2009 7:57 pm

Fiery Angel wrote:
zedz wrote:Shock! Horror! Criterion are doing another Benjamin Button!
I thought the same thing when I saw the extras.
With BB, I thought the crux of it was not that Criterion was presenting extra material it did not create but rather that a large entertainment firm was apparently buying the right to place a smaller brand with more cachet on its own product. And it's not that I want to raise that discussion here by any means.
Last edited by Gregory on Sun May 17, 2009 3:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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