Gus Van Sant on Chantal Akerman: “An influence more than essential” – Liberation

Todd Haynes, director:

” I just woke up [on the west coast of the United States, ed] and to hear the news, I think everybody around Me was in shock. I discovered his work at the university, and I think the first film was Jeanne Dielman . It was one of those experiences that change your way of thinking, seeing, designing film. This had a profound impact on how I can conceive the idea of ​​storytelling and how to portray the life of a woman on the screen: this experiment the film is riveting routine household tasks of a wife and this camera in Ozu who absolutely confronts her in her kitchen, all this aroused in me an unimaginable emotion.

“People talk in terms of duration, length of plans, but it is a film of extraordinary suspense, with an unpredictable power on how to wrest meaning to events and more tenuous details, which at the option of the prospective own time to the film become disturbing, thrilling. So it only have this scene where Jeanne Dielman interrupted his ritual of making coffee for the entire room is found, I remember, suffocated. This film has a unique power over you, its only way to focus on certain things and to exclude the other, its political character, its particular ethic.

“Jeanne Dielman is a woman more strong, faced with difficult choices, the character of my film Safe , but there is an obvious link for me between them. And composition of the film, how household objects are critical to the subject, all heavily influenced me, like this film and its conceptual language can be extremely so inventive in mind of Gus van Sant, who I know love and owes him much.

“I have not seen his other films, but many of them, such as News from Home , Go Anna or I, you, he, she have affected me immensely. She had a cinematic language alone makes many formal inventions that humor. I think back to the last time I saw her in Paris, and it makes me very sad “

Gus Van Sant, director:.

“I was influenced by many of his films, as well as incredible facilities it made for museums, but above all it is the discovery of Jeanne Dielman that immeasurably affected me when I was a film student. I often see him since, at home, and I remain amazed borders it explodes in this film, she invents in terms of narrative, report to the character. When I made movies like Gerry, Elephant and Last Days , this has been an influence for me more than essential: there was for me Tarr and Chantal Akerman “

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Jonas Mekas, experimental filmmaker, creator of the Cinematheque Anthology Film Archives in New York

“I met Chantal Akerman at the Anthology Film Archives, which opened shortly before, in 1970. It must have been about 20 years, and spent several months in New York at that time. She had already made a short film but the Anthology was his university, his film school: she attended all sessions daily. We became friends. It was then someone booked, very nice.

“I do not know if I would say that we influenced, but I think that film she discovered at that time there, mine and all other [American experimental filmmakers, note], has perhaps helped to develop an interest she had for real life and for his own life . A change in the approach of the film diary, which was reinforced in his own ideas – sometimes it is reassuring to realize that others do what you have in mind

‘I’. loved his work, it was really very strong, and even before it turns to a more personal cinema. I remember at the exit of Jeanne Dielman I wrote for the Village Voice I had a very positive review of his film because I thought that it started well, it was an important film.

“She had a fighting spirit, a very direct way of doing things, had no doubt, and perfectly controlled the ideas, materials that intended to use, but still personal, very personal way. All his work became more and more personal, with the years, and ended with the film about her mother. It is not known where she would have gone then, what is so sad. All his work is like a huge epic that could link together all parties “

Claire Denis, filmmaker.

“The first meetings with Chantal was at the Rotterdam festival in the 70 to see his first three films. She made films that relied a lot to me at the time. We saw, it was: it was there that I felt something stronger for it, which was very different from me. It was his life, his career, it was already a movie heroine at the time. It was impossible to be modeled because it was unique, it was anything but that someone could capture, seize or take.

“I remember Any One night ( 1982) with Aurore Clément, it’s a film I still think often and a lot to me. I can still see all the plans, like the Brussels train station at the end. The film embodies when filmmakers like she had a form of autonomy to make their films, then it became more difficult. It was both Chantal history and a film about a woman filmmaker, there was everything in this movie for me.

“I, you, he, she (1976) is a unique film, for me it is extremely strong because it is made with his flesh, his skin, his life. When we say that someone has put everything in a movie, we can say that it actually always put everything in its cinema without artifice.

“I loved yelling at me with her when found himself in Un Certain Regard at Cannes, around films Mograbi [Israeli filmmaker, ed], she defended a certain way of speaking of Israel. There was something violent and joyful in being able to get so angry. With his passing, it’s like a piece of me that had been taken from me. “

Sylvie Testud turned Chantal Akerman in The Captive in 2000, and Tomorrow We Move , 2004

“Face Chantal Akerman, I realized that you can be an adult and still want to learn, all the time, without stopping. She had a very youthful appearance, eyes open at all times. Chantal never made me feel like 20 years older than me.

“With it, I discovered that you can not do anything on camera. We actors we always put pressure eyes of others. She taught me that often enough to just be present, that is enough not bad. In his work, including his adaptation of Proust, everything had to be right, worked. But this is only so when things are as accurate, that the accident is the most beautiful.

“She was pushing things to the end, she was the love of imperfection. She was manic-depressive, and there were disturbances and other times very solar. When it was dark, it was melancholy more than anything. She had the curiosity of a teenager, always ready to pack for something and then to fall into moments of doubt. I think Chantal Akerman is not defined as a complete person, over. The adults give roles: doctor, lawyer, director. Even the latter, she would not endorse it fully. She was so solar if this Chantal when leaving a room, it created a lack “

Marie Losier, director:.

” Under his bearskin flame, cigarette in mouth, she was a tender and pure girlfriend, fragile, full and inspiring filmmaker who fought against everything, curious about everything. It was she who convinced me not to give up my first feature film, The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye despite the money problems: “Do not expect anything Mary make your film gradually and does not change what you are. “ I did it.

” And there she was, still, systematically removing these shoes after five minutes. She was walking in socks, lighting one cigarette and when I asked him she answered with his deep voice “It’s going Chantal?”: “I’m off my shoes!”
And she laughed! She was at the margin of everything and that’s what made her so beautiful. “

Andrew Bujalski, filmmaker ( Computer Chess ) and alumnus of Harvard Chantal Akerman

” I am shocked and my heart is broken, I liked him a lot. At the time I was a kid 20 years out of an American suburb, headed the glamorous fantasy of what a European artist embodies.

“When I met her, Was it all at once but also more determined, funny and generous than I had imagined. His work was outstanding and I hope your readers will take the time to rediscover it. “

Kathy Halbreich, Associate Director of the New York MoMa. While she was at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, she commissioned and co-produced with Catherine David of the Tennis Court, his first museum installation: “D’Est, on the edge of fiction” (1995):

” The death of Chantal’s a shock. But his films also infused with existential melancholy that came home to me in the flesh. I had approached with Michael Tarantino, a freelance commissioner in 1990, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Given his virtuoso talent for clear distinctions between the personal and the political, it seemed the ideal person to express the changes that would result from the event. But obviously, Chantal became interested much more quickly to what would not change – the immobility of Mr. All-the-world women suffering, especially in Moscow, where queues were waiting for hours, light dark.

She captures the complex beauty of these people and their landscape, in static and moving images. She did not invent dummy heroism, but instead found what life meant, this human being meant. “D’Est” installation in the museum in 1995 (the Walker Art Center, ed), is difficult to describe because it attaches to very complex knot of feelings that resulted in his films. The installation was deployed in three rooms: the first, the film From East is projected continuously in the second eight monitors triptychs recomposed images of the film, and in the last room, a single monitor. There are no pictures on it, but you hear Chantal recite a Bible passage in Hebrew and read the working notes of his film. I think making movies – to pan, lingering, floating, using his camera as caress – was his religion. And she made us believe in the precept of Hollywood director Douglas Sirk – “Motion is emotion” (the movement is emotion). That is to say, to the film itself. “

Antoine Companion, professor at the College of France, who had invited her in 2013 to lecture on Proust following The Captive (2000) – inspired by The Captive. :

“I had wanted to invite after The Captive (2000) because it is a film about the work of Proust seems to me successful and interesting. It takes time, it concentrates, it does not tell Proust Proust but it is, in the evocation of emotions, in temporality. In general his movies had something Proustian in their way to make time in their economy. There are many words but a lot of silence in Proust, and Chantal Akerman took in his films time of silence. I invited other non-specialists, a lawyer, a mathematician. I remember she had shocked a number of people talking at once anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, his family during the war. ”

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, director:

“It’s a very sad loss. It was one of the few honest-pullers who continued to provoke us, even in the world of cinema to drift so-called experimental. She had always kept it fresh and new. This absolute master will really miss you. “

Read also The flame Akerman

AP Photos. Getty Images. AFP

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