Chantal Akerman Collection - 4-DVD Box Set / Chantal Akerman - Exiles (1999-2006)

"Exiles" includes four documentaries of one of the key names in modern cinema: the Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman. In the east, Akerman takes a great trip through Eastern Europe filming everything that impresses him, faces, streets, cars, doors, windows, men and women, young and old, passing and stopping, sitting or standing. South filmed in the southern United States, follows in the footsteps of the lynching of a black by three white and how this tragedy is part of a mental and physical landscape. On the other hand, is a portrait of two diametrically opposed worlds condemned to live: first, Mexicans trying to illegally enter the US under the watchful eye of immigration services; the other hand, American citizens are wary of these migratory waves. Finally, There, self-portrait documentary in which the filmmaker, locked in his apartment in Tel Aviv, leaving just to buy cigarettes or food, filmed around through the windows and think aloud about the events, banal and terrible, that occur during their stay in prison. Ensue childhood memories, thoughts about loneliness, Judaism and the act of creation, which eventually form a peculiar and intimate portrait of filmmaker.

Cyril Béghin As stated in the preface included in the script of this issue: "The consistency of the subjects and forms of these films makes either a sum -four tragedies gravitating around the same desolation of man by man as in a series that explores declines and the same formal obsessions. The long shots, tracking shots, extreme precision framing, the use of ambient sounds and voice of the filmmaker Chantal Akerman everything that has been inventing his work takes precedent here, to a degree of completion achieved by both the documentary genre and the use of video."





Shortly after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, and “before it was too late”, Chantal Akerman made a journey from East Germany in late summer, across Poland and the Baltics, to deepest winter in Moscow, “filming everything that touched me”. Tracking across city streets, landscapes, and faces, the film also takes us inside the private spaces of the countries’ inhabitants, where they peel potatoes, watch old TVs or stoically stare down the camera.

Akerman takes satisfaction in the demanding nature of her films. Most directors feel complimented, she has said, when viewers say they are not aware of passing time: “But with me, you see the time pass. And you feel it pass. You sense that this is time that leads towards death… I’ve taken two hours of [your] life.” – Film Comment

While taking a minimalist approach to its form, FROM THE EAST is rich in content, with fascinatingly culturally specific settings, music and images creating an entertainingly retro and unexpectedly moving experience.









Chantal Akerman originally planned to make a meditative film on the American South. On June 7th, 1998 in Jasper, Texas, only days before filming began, James Byrd, Jr., a black man aged 49 was brutally murdered by three white men. Byrd, after being severely beaten, was chained to the back of a pickup and dragged three miles down an asphalt road. What was left of his body was dumped in front of a black cemetery.

SOUTH is a quiet portrait of the town of Jasper and its residents. Rather than focusing on the aftermath of the killing on national politics or the murderers themselves, Akerman centers on the environment of Jasper and the people affected by Byrd’s death. Akerman was allowed to film Byrd’s funeral and the ceremony is a considerable segment of the film.

Akerman writes, “How does the southern silence become so heavy and so menacing so suddenly? How do the trees and the whole natural environment evoke so intensely death, blood, and the weight of history? How does the present call up the past? And how does this past, with a mere gesture or a simple regard, haunt and torment you as you wander along an empty cotton field, or a dusty country road?”

SOUTH is constructed of static shots and long pans along country roads interspersed with interviews with townspeople. The structure of the interviews feel somewhat naïve if one were to focus more acutely on the politics of the racially motivated murder. Through what could have been a lack of probing, the interviewees talk uncomfortably around issues, and Akermans’ concern with not interfering obstructs deeper analysis.

Nonetheless, Akerman is a tourist and an outsider, and she seems aware of this. SOUTH could be considered a contribution to a cinema, including Alain Resnais’ fictional HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR or Alexander Kluge’s BRUTALITY IN STONE, that attempts to recognize human suffering while being critical of its representation. Though, as a documentary, the film raises slightly different questions. Is it possible in documentary to construct representations of someone’s pain, and if so, is this ethical?

IMDB

FROM THE OTHER SIDE looks at the situation of Mexican immigrants at the border between Agua Prieta, a Mexican border town in the state of Sonora, and Douglas, Arizona, the city on the other side. The first half of the film is set in Mexico. Between static and tracking shots of desert landscapes and the border wall, Akerman interviews people who plan to or have attempted to cross the desert into the US, including a young boy in an orphanage. She quietly interviews an older couple whose son died in the desert when his group lost their way.

Similar in structure to her earlier film SOUTH, and stylistically reminiscent to FROM THE EAST, FROM THE OTHER SIDE feels perhaps the most active. By physically crossing the border and filming on both sides, we experience Akerman’s and our own ease of travel between, as well as witness the shift into the militaristic and racially skewed reality existing in Douglas, Arizona. While in Douglas, Akerman interviews a Mexican consulate, the sheriff and paranoid white locals.

Through Akermans’ signature steady gaze, she “insists” – we have no choice but to look, think, settle into the image, and to let the image settle in; in a way the length of the shots summon respect for the person on the screen. In one scene, per his request, a man reads a pained statement among his traveling companions in a cafeteria. He tells us why his group is migrating and what the journey has been like for them. Akerman says, “You have to be really like a sponge when you make a documentary.” FROM THE OTHER SIDE urges the viewer to be porous.









Despite initial reluctance to film, during a trip to teach in Tel Aviv Akerman found a frame in the apartment she was staying in that she could not resist. The work was to unfold as an exploration and reflection on her own ambivalent relationship with a city and by extension her own Jewish history. Bill Arning states that she, “builds an internal inventory of responses to the spectral lives she indirectly witnesses.” La-bas blurs the boundaries presence and absence, interior and exterior in a style that ‘inverts’ her usual methodical roving camera eye.

The Belgian filmmaker spent a period of time, unspecified, a week or two, in an apartment in Tel Aviv that was lent to her. She lived there alone, in virtually complete isolation, indirectly filming and narrating the experience, sustained only by "provisions" found in the kitchen, especially rice and carrots, having had stomach trouble from an Israeli salad; didn't go to cafes or supermarkets, and rarely even went out, except for a couple of forays to the sea; the apartment was a block or so from the beach.

La-bàs is a series of long stationary shots out the windows, often showing figures of old people on balconies on the roof or buildings opposite. A woman, immobile, is tended to by her husband. One man sits for long periods motionless. Ackerman in voice-over says she thinks he's watching his plants grow. "But I don't think plants grow any faster in Israel," she says.

Is this any better than the proverbial watching paint dry? Two aspects, visual and auditory, save this thin, dry, austere documentary from being a sterile art piece and make it both thought-provoking and haunting, for those who have the patience to sit through it; many will not.

To begin with, screens filter the light of the windows in a beautiful way: the shots are often handsome, not unworthy of something by Hou Hsiau-hsien or Tsai Ming-liang, if without their human figures moving about.

Further, Ackerman's voice overs, spoken off-camera during the shots, though skimpy, provide fleetingly penetrating, brutally frank self-revelations and contexts that range from the personal to the universal. Her father was once going to emigrate to Israal just after WWII and was waiting in Marseille to go, but he was warned that the Palestine environment was too harsh. The family settled in Belgium instead. She speaks of an aunt who committed suicide. Is she herself depressed? She speaks of passivity and laziness. She may be agoraphobic. She clearly is going through an agoraphobic period. She may also be afraid of bombs. A parent calls and expresses concern about her going out to dangerous places; she promises she won't. She speaks of prisons, external and self-imposed: this is one of the latter kind.

People call and invite her out. She says she can't because she's working. This devotion to the enterprise makes something positive and substantial, even noble, about this otherwise evanescent, uncertain project. This is an act of painfully heightened self-consciousness, a self-examination, a journal both Zen-like and intensive. She also speaks of reading; making extensive notes; having "complex" thoughts. A certain ambivalence toward her Jewishness is also involved. Finally, with minimal means, Ackerman has forged something unique.

A telling image: a Chasidic family leaving the beach. The man, in his quaint outfit, symbolizes the oddity of the Israeli enterprise. Ackerman doesn't comment on the oppression of Palestinians or Israeli dependence on the US. Her seclusion in the middle of Israel's largest city may be comment enough. This is something she apparently can't be a part of. But in her alienation, she couldn't be more Jewish.

IMDB Reviewer

Chantal Akerman is a filmmaker whose wide-ranging film and video practices explore themes of identity, sexuality, quotidian reality and exile, and works against conventional filmmaking in order to discover new worlds. As J. Hoberman has said: "Comparable in force and originality to Godard or Fassbinder, Chantal Akerman is arguably the most important European director of her generation."

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