Chantal Akerman x Niña Weijers: Book presentation + Films
’24
Lange Steenstraat 14
B-9000 Gent
Chantal Akerman in Dis-moi © INA
Lange Steenstraat 14
B-9000 Gent
Niña Weijers, the author of Kamers antikamers, De consequenties and Cassandra (Atlas Contact), wrote the foreword to the new, Dutch translation of Chantal Akerman’s well-known book My Mother Laughs, issued by the independent publishing house Koppernik. Akerman wrote about her childhood, her mother’s escape from Auschwitz and how their relationship shaped her work.
Niña Weijers will have a talk with art critic and curator Joséphine Vandekerckhove about Chantal Akerman and her own work.
Followed by a screening of two rarely shown films by Chantal Akerman about mothers.
In collaboration with bookshop Paard van Troje
Chantal Akerman
L’Enfant aimé ou je joue à être une femme mariée
A young mother, alone with her daughter, confides in a friend who happens to be the director herself. Chantal Akerman, although she sympathizes with the mother, does not say a word.
One of Chantal Akerman’s most rarely seen works is an intimate portrait of a young mother (played by Claire Wauthion) whose day-to-day routines are intercut with her stream-of-consciousness ruminations on her family, sex life, relationships, and body. Though Akerman (who also appears in the film) was later dismissive of her second directorial effort, its patient focus on the tension between domesticity and a woman’s inner life marks L’enfant aimé as an important link in the development of her artistry.
“The child of the title may not be the child we see in the film… There is a tangible sense of play, of dressing up, of regarding one’s own body in the way that children do.” (Adam Roberts)
“Ce portrait complexe d’une féminité maternelle ou maternité feminine représente l’esquisse matricielle des futures réalisations de la cinéaste, tant du point de vue stylistique que thématique.” (Muriel Andrin)
Presented in a version restored by CINEMATEK.
L'Enfant aimé ou je joue à être une femme mariée © Fondation Chantal Akerman, Cinematek
Chantal Akerman
Dis-moi
”Tell me, Mom. What memories do you have of your mother?”
“About grandmothers. I don’t have a grandmother anymore. My mother in voice-over talks about her grandmother.” (Chantal Akerman)
Commissioned by French television as part of a series about grandmothers, Dis-moi follows Chantal Akerman as she speaks with a handful of Jewish women who survived the Shoah, including her own mother, who left Auschwitz an orphan and whose voice we hear from time to time, but never see. The filmmaker is in the frame and conducts the interviews, bearing witness to the stories told by these elderly women.
“Dis-moi is grounded in practices of listening, receptivity and silent accounting, as Akerman’s presence allows each woman to elaborate her lifetime story. They do so gingerly, selectively. The repetitions, ellipses and rhymes between them accumulate across the sequence of visits, becoming formal signs, like much of Akerman’s work – resounding tropes of return, wraithlike in their delicate yet bruising impact.” (Elena Gorfinkel)
“The set-up in which Akerman captures these stories is the exact opposite of that in Jean Eustache’s Numéro zéro (1971), filmed for the same ‘Grand-mères’ series, where Odette Robert, dark glasses and whisky glass in hand, was already very much an Eustache character.” (Stéphane Delorme)
Presented in a version restored by INA.
Dis-moi © Institut national de l'audiovisuel (INA)
Dis-moi © Institut national de l'audiovisuel (INA)
