Chantal Akerman Collection: Volumes 1 and 2

[phoenix474]

Looks like Amazon has included the extras for volume 2:

Extras

Five Blu-ray set featuring 12 landmark films by Chantal Akerman
Hotel des Acacias (Yves Hanchar, Pierre Charles Rochette, Francois Vanderveken, Isabelle Willems, 1982): the outcome of an INSAS workshop led by Chantal Akerman
Audio commentary on Histoires d'Amerique: Food, Family and Philosophy by Marc David Jacobs
No Home But Cinemas: The Spaces of Chantal Akerman (2025): video essay by writer and critic Jessica McGoff
Le Rendez-vous de Chantal Akerman (2025): panel discussion with Sonia Wieder-Atherton (cellist and composer), Adam Roberts (co-founder of A Nos Amours collective), Celine Brouwez (Fondation Chantal Akerman), Lynda Myles (former director of Edinburgh International Film Festival) and Isabel Stevens (Sight and Sound)
Marilyn Watelet Q&A (2025): Akerman's lifelong friend and producer looks back over her life and career
Sonia Wieder-Atherton Q&A (2025): the cellist and composer discusses Golden Eighties
Proust and Signs (2025): video essay on La Captive by writer and critic Cristina Alvarez Lopez
Autour de la Folie Almayer (2022): 'making of' documentary, shot by Sopheak Sao in 2010 and edited by Marwan Montel in 2021
Everyone Has Their Own Life (2025): video essay on No Home Movie by artist Sarah Wood
72-page perfect-bound book featuring new essays by Erin Nunoda, Daniella Shreir, Rachel Pronger, Ivone Margulies, Elena Gorfinkel, Blair McClenden, Catherine Wheatley, Ivan Ramos, Adam Roberts, Marion Schmid, Alisa Lebow and Cristina Alvarez Lopez
Limited edition of 2,000 copies

[amberry]

Pretty disappointed with the final (?) contents, so many features missing, let alone shorts... Looks like the Capricci set is the way to go?

[ryannichols7]

nothing specific on Toute une nuit seems a bit baffling

[GoodOldNeon]

Pretty disappointed with the final (?) contents, so many features missing, let alone shorts... Looks like the Capricci set is the way to go?

The Capricci set is wonderful if you don't need subtitles. My only quibble with it is that for some reason it doesn't include Les Années 80 while Volume 2 of the BFI set does, so to be as complete as possible you need to have both.

[amberry]

Pretty disappointed with the final (?) contents, so many features missing, let alone shorts... Looks like the Capricci set is the way to go?

The Capricci set is wonderful if you don't need subtitles. My only quibble with it is that for some reason it doesn't include Les Années 80 while Volume 2 of the BFI set does, so to be as complete as possible you need to have both.

For some reason I had it in mind that the Capricci had English subtitles on at least all of the features, but looking at the list I guess not.

[MichaelB]

Full specs announced for volume 2:

CHANTAL AKERMAN: VOLUME 2, 1982-2015
Limited Edition BFI Blu-ray 5-disc box set released on 23 June 2025

Central to the BFI’s major 2025 celebration of Chantal Akerman, alongside a near complete retrospective, Chantal Akerman: Adventures in Perception, at BFI Southbank earlier this year, is the release of two Limited Edition (2,000 copies) Blu-ray box sets, representing the first significant release of Akerman’s work on any format in the UK. Following Chantal Akerman: Volume 1, 1967-1978, which has nearly sold out, Chantal Akerman: Volume 2, 1982-2015, a 5-disc set containing 12 landmark films will be released on 23 June 2025.

Born in Brussels in 1950 to parents who had survived the Holocaust, Chantal Akerman directed more than 40 films (short, medium and feature-length) over almost 50 years, spanning fiction, documentary, musical comedy and literary adaptation. Today, she is regarded as one of the most important and influential directors of her generation. Akerman’s personal, non-conformist body of work has resonated with cinephiles globally and become increasingly relevant since her death in 2015, with filmmakers including Joanna Hogg (The Eternal Daughter), Céline Sciamma (Petite Maman), Alice Diop (Saint Omer) and Jacques Audiard (Emilia Pérez), among others, citing her radical and experimental approach to cinema as a direct inspiration. Although best known for her landmark second narrative feature, Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), which topped the Sight and Sound Greatest Films of All Time Poll in 2022 (becoming the first female-directed film to take the number one spot since the poll’s inception in 1952), Akerman never stopped rebelling, continuously experimenting throughout her career to challenge the formal and narrative boundaries of film.

The films

• Toute une nuit (1982)
• Les Années 80 (1983)
• Golden Eighties (1986)
• La paresse (1986)
• Histoires d’Amérique: Food, Family and Philosophy (1988)
• D’Est (1993)
• Sud (1999)
• La Captive (2000)
• De l’autre côté (2002)
• Là-bas (2006)
• La Folie Almayer (2011)
• No Home Movie (2015)

Special features
• Hôtel des Acacias (Yves Hanchar, Pierre Charles Rochette, François Vanderveken, Isabelle Willems, 1982): this short film was the outcome of an INSAS workshop led by Chantal Akerman
• Audio commentary on Histoires d’Amérique: Food, Family and Philosophy by Marc David Jacobs
• No Home But Cinema: The Spaces of Chantal Akerman (2025): video essay by writer and critic Jessica McGoff
• Le Rendez-vous de Chantal Akerman (2025): panel discussion with Sonia Wieder-Atherton (cellist and composer), Adam Roberts (co-founder of A Nos Amours collective), Céline Brouwez (Fondation Chantal Akerman), Lynda Myles (writer and producer) and Isabel Stevens (Sight and Sound)
• Marilyn Watelet Q&A (2025): Akerman’s lifelong friend and producer looks back over her life and career
• Sonia Wieder-Atherton Q&A (2025): the cellist and composer discusses Golden Eighties
• Proust and Signs (2025): video essay on La Captive by writer and critic Cristina Álvarez López
• Autour de la Folie Almayer (2022): ‘making of’ documentary, shot by Sopheak Sao and edited by Marwan Montel
• Everyone Has Their Own Life (2025): video essay on No Home Movie by artist Sarah Wood
• 72-page perfect bound book featuring new essays by Erin Nunoda, Daniella Shreir, Rachel Pronger, Ivone Margulies, Elena Gorfinkel, Blair McClendon, Catherine Wheatley, Iván A Ramos, Adam Roberts, Marion Schmid, Alisa Lebow and Cristina Álvarez López, with recollections from Yves Hanchar and PC Rochette

Product details
RRP: £59.99 / Cat. no. BFIB1531 / 15
Belgium, France, Switzerland, West Germany / 1982-2015 / colour / 1,143 minutes / French, English and Spanish language with English subtitles / original aspect ratios // 5 x BD50: 1080p, 24fps, LPCM 1.0 mono, LPCM 2.0 stereo, DTS-HD MA 5.1 audio

[black&huge]

Anything different than what people have been disappointed with in the previous post regarding the extras? Which films are still not included?

[spectre]

Seems like basically the same as what was previously announced as far as I can tell.

You'll still need the Capricci set if you want the short and mid-length works Dis-moi, L'homme à la valise, Family Business, Lettre de cinéaste: Chantal Akerman, Autour d'un Marteau, Rue Mallet-Stevens, Trois Strophes sur le nom de Sacher, Les trois dernières sonates de Franz Schubert, Chantal Akerman par Chantal Akerman and Le jour ou… (all English-subtitled or in English) or the features Letters Home, Un jour Pina a demandé…, A Couch in New York, Tomorrow We Move and shorts Pour febe Elisabeth Velasquez, El Salvador, Le déménagement, À l'est avec Sonia Wieder-Atherton and Tombée de nuit sur Shanghai without subtitles.

Of that list above, the vast majority of the missing English-subtitled films (everything bar the last two) are in the '80s volume of the Capricci set, so you can probably get away with just having that alongside the BFI release. Otherwise, if you speak French, you should probably get the whole thing!

[andyli]

That depends on how much of an Akerman completist you are. The BFI covers all the major titles that will give a pretty good idea what her cinema is about.

[spectre]

Depends on how you define "major" – neither set includes Night and Day or Portrait of a Young Girl in Brussels, both absolutely key works that I think you could easily argue are in the best five or ten features she ever made. L'homme à la valise, Le déménagement and Tomorrow We Move are also superb.

What you miss in skipping a lot of those shorter '80s works is a continuation of the autofiction thread that began with Saute ma ville and Je, tu, il, elle and ended with her very last film, where Akerman is as much a presence in front of the camera as behind it, and a coherent "character" like those embodied by Buster Keaton or Woody Allen in their own films. Thankfully the BFI set includes La paresse, which is a great short in this vein, but otherwise the focus is decidedly more on the other (no less important) stream of her work that tended to look outwards. So I think there is a gap here of work that's more than just for curiosity or extended research; these are important parts of her filmography, and I hope some future release incorporates them.

[ex-cowboy]

For those who may not know, La Paresse was made for the omnibus film Seven Women, Seven Sins, a ZDF co-production also featuring shorts from Valie Export, Helke Sander and Ulrike Ottinger (amongst others). The latter's contribution, Pride is currently available to view on Doc Alliance (at least in the UK).

[GaryC]

Portrait d’une jeune fille de la fin des années 60 à Bruxelles (which I saw at the BFI Southbank during their retrospective in March) would have likely music rights issues, so I can see why it's not been included. The short J'ai faim, j'ai froid would have been good to include, but I don't know about the rights there. It was one of the first Akerman films to be shown on British television, back in 1984 during an edition of Channel 4's Visions: Cinema. (C4 showed Les rendez-vous d'Anna and Toute une nuit the same year.)

[ex-cowboy]

J'ai faim, j'ai froid was available to view earlier this year via Le Cinéma Club, so presumably it is licensable in some form (whether that also means for home video, I couldn't say). It would be nice if it had a wider release as it's a superb little film.

[spectre]

Ah yes, forgot to mention that one – it's also on the 1980s Capricci volume but without subs. As far as I can tell, the only English-friendly release it's ever had is this 1992 VHS (secondhand copies of which are still for sale online) that packaged it with Hotel Monterey and Saute ma ville: https://www.facetsmovies.com/user/movie ... _id=858951

[criterionsnob]

I purchased Volume 2 because I already own the Criterion, but I'm wondering if anyone has compared Volume 1 with the Criterion set. There is some speculation earlier in the thread that the BFI should have superior encoding, but has that been confirmed by anyone? I'm trying to decide if I should purchase Volume 1 as well, mostly for the book and (maybe) superior encoding.

[nicolas]

I purchased Volume 2 because I already own the Criterion, but I'm wondering if anyone has compared Volume 1 with the Criterion set. There is some speculation earlier in the thread that the BFI should have superior encoding, but has that been confirmed by anyone? I'm trying to decide if I should purchase Volume 1 as well, mostly for the book and (maybe) superior encoding.

I didn’t get Criterion’s set because of how ghastly the encoding turned out. They crammed all the films and extras on three discs. See screenshots here. Thankfully, David Mackenzie / Fidelity in Motion did the BFI sets and he spread the films out much better.

[andyli]

I hope the Vol. 2 set went into production late enough to use the 2024 restoration of Golden Eighties, not the horribly teal-ified 2018 restoration.

It seems that Golden Eighties indeed utilizes the newer 4K restoration, and it looks gorgeous.

Golden Eighties was restored by the Royal Film Archive of Belgium (CINEMATEK) and L'Immagine Ritrovata (Bologna), in collaboration with Fondation Chantal Akerman, with the help of Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, Leora Barish, Henry Bean, Ostrovsky Family Fund, SWA. The film was scanned in 4K using 35mm negatives preserved in the collections of the Royal Film Archive of Belgium. The image restoration was carried out at the L'Immagine Ritrovata laboratory under the supervision of cameraman Luc Benhamou. The sound was restored by L'Immagine Ritrovata using the original mix.

[HinkyDinkyTruesmith]

I received my copy of Vol. 2 earlier in the week and can confirm that the de-teal-ified Golden Eighties restoration looks amazing on the disc.

[Stefan Andersson]

I understand there might be rights issues with Portrait d'une jeune fille de la fin des années 60 à Bruxelles (Portrait of a Young Girl at the End of the 1960s in Brussels); there is a DCP, credited to Royal Film Archive of Belgium — CINEMATEK and Fondation Chantal Akerman:
https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/10843

[yoloswegmaster]

Anyone know where one can purchase volume 1 without having to pay exorbitant prices for it?

[hearthesilence]

I should remind everyone, the Akerman retrospective is going on at MoMA, and they are screening DCP's of the same restorations used for these sets.

[domino harvey]

Anyone know where one can purchase volume 1 without having to pay exorbitant prices for it?

Best bet is probably turning on an eBay notification for when it gets posted. You’ll sometimes see lower prices for even super rare sets that someone wants to move quickly

[GaryC]

I understand there might be rights issues with Portrait d'une jeune fille de la fin des années 60 à Bruxelles (Portrait of a Young Girl at the End of the 1960s in Brussels); there is a DCP, credited to Royal Film Archive of Belgium — CINEMATEK and Fondation Chantal Akerman:
https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/10843

Music rights, which were originally only cleared for French TV broadcast. I saw that DCP at the BFI Southbank during their Akerman retrospective back in January - made a point of seeing it because I knew it wouldn't be in the box sets.

[hearthesilence]

I understand there might be rights issues with Portrait d'une jeune fille de la fin des années 60 à Bruxelles (Portrait of a Young Girl at the End of the 1960s in Brussels); there is a DCP, credited to Royal Film Archive of Belgium — CINEMATEK and Fondation Chantal Akerman:
https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/10843

I actually saw this and it appears to be a straight scan of a film print. I say a straight scan because all the blemishes and imperfections of a print are left in, particularly at the start of the film and around the joined ends of one reel change (which also had burnt marks signaling it was time to switch reels). So no restoration work likely, but the color and detail was good and even - the DCP may have been created from a rare archival print they simply wanted to preserve rather than loan out.

Richard Brody had an excellent write-up this month that also quotes Loris Dru-Lumbroso, a publicist for Capricci, saying music licenses were definitely the issue - not only were they limited to the original television broadcast, the licenses were not in perpetuity and lasted for only a short time. I'll only add that by doing minimal production design and filming this in the world of 1993, it makes the promise of the impending May 1968 protests all the more disillusioning and the future all the more fatalistic - time has marched on and we see the revolution will never happen. Seen in the context of today's world and the failure of, say, Occupy Wall Street, the 2016 and the 2024 U.S. elections, the film is even more potent and much more damning.

[diamonds]

Very well said hearthesilence. I've only seen the film on the crummy TV rip in circulation, but even in the degraded form I found it overpowering. I have never forgotten, and will forever be haunted by, the moment they descend into the metro and Michèle curses the commuters/shoppers as she realizes with a sinking feeling that things will go on as they are—that people will submit to a steady and inevitable decline, that they will sell their lives for so little. In this moment, the choice you note to leave 1993 "untouched" bears fruit with tremendous force: we suddenly see before us two ghosts. And it's an anguished echo of the words uttered by Jean-Pierre Cassel in Les rendez-vous d'Anna almost two decades prior:

You know, I think things will keep getting worse. That the price of milk and honey, the price of happiness, will get so high that something will happen. It can't go on like this.

And to think the political dimension exists within and alongside one of the most exquisitely poised portraits of youth, all in just under an hour… A towering film. I long to one day see it in a better state. Frankly I'm sick to death of hearing about music rights.