The Akerman Year

Kate and Simon are joined by author and film academic Rebecca Sheehan to dissect two later Akerman features, including her final scripted feature, bound together in this episode by their respective takes on literary giants. First up is 2000's La Captive , derived from a section of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time ; next is Almayer's Folly , derived from the Joseph Conrad novella/story of the...

Film scholar and author Patricia White joins us to tackle a couple of Akerman's more direct attempts at self-portraiture ( Lettre d'un Cinéaste and Chantal Akerman par Chantal Akerman ), along with Sami Frey's behind-the-scenes chronicle Autour de Jeanne Dielman (edited by Akerman in the early 2000s). Discussed: the greatness of Delphine Seyrig, the joy of listening to Akerman talk about movies, h...

Riding guest-free for a change, Kate and Simon tackle three films (a short and two features) that touch on issues of racism, injustice, and murder: the Amnesty International-prompted Pour Febe Elisabeth Velasquez, El Salvador , 1999's Sud and 2002's De L'Autre Coté . We also dive a little more than usual into criticisms of Akerman's documentary work/style and consider how the intervening decades h...

With the help of scholar and filmmaker Alisa Lebow, who arrives armed with memories of meeting and speaking with Akerman, we tackle some of the Akerman work most inherently tied up with questions and challenges of Jewish identity, history and politics. These films are: 1980's medium-length TV doc Dis-Moi ( Tell Me ); 1986's tragicomic examination of Jewish life in New York, Histoires d'Amerique ,...

After a mid-season siesta, we're back with one of the most obviously pleasurable and accessible groupings of any episode of The Akerman Year: that's right, it's time for musicals. Girish Shambu is on with us to talk about the beguiling whatsit Les Années 80 , the one-hour TV documentary One Day Pina Asked , and finally Akerman's long-in-the-making Golden Eighties . (Apologies for the blown-out sou...

This month, we're taking a look at Akerman's sole foray into the English mainstream via the 1996 rom-com A Couch in New York , while also taking a look at the 7-minute short that followed in its wake (the introspective Le jour ou ) and looking backwards to a previous comic gem, 1984's 60-minute L'homme a la valise . Joining us for this spirited and lively discussion is the great Miriam Bale, retur...

Once again, the stylistic breadth of Akerman's work comes to the fore via two features linked closely in theme but vastly divergent in approach. First up is Toute une nuit (1982), which chronicles a single smouldering Brussels night via the (mostly) romantic trials and tribulations of several dozen characters; that's followed this month by the more divisive Nuit et jour (1991), a chronicle of bifu...

This month, Lodgers alumnus and filmmaker Jessica Bardsley joins us to talk about three exceedingly different projects, all linked by the theme of displacement: 1978's Jeanne Dielman follow-up Les rendez-vous d'Anna , 1984's hilarious Family Business , made while looking to secure funding for Golden Eighties (more on that one in a future episode) and 1993's commanding documentary depicting life in...

This month, we're joined by Lakshmi Padmanabhan to discuss two films centered around the acts of letter-reading: first up is the widely heralded News From Home , Akerman's 1976 feature juxtaposing the letters her mother wrote to her in the early 70s with contemporary images of New York life. After that, we zoom ahead a decade to look at her less well-known (and much less-seen) Letters Home , a fil...

Special guest Erin Nunoda joins us for a fun and freewheeling (and queer theory-festooned!) chat about a stylistically diverse set of sharp, daring and often pretty funny movies set in Brussels, Paris, and points in between. Films discussed this month: La Paresse Je tu il elle J'ai faim, j'ai froid Portrait d'une jeune fille de la fin des années 60 à Bruxelles Clips of "Suzanne" performed by: Fran...

For our appropriately gargantuan first proper episode, we welcome back fellow Lodger and film-studies veteran Justine Smith to dive in at the deep end with discussion of some of Akerman's early shorts, before moving onto the film Akerman is still far and away best known for, the 200-minute colossus Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles . Kate's piece on Dennis Hopper's Out of the Blu...

In our introductory episode, we give a high-level overview of Chantal Akerman's origins, tease the future of the podcast, and dive right into Akerman's spirited first short film, Saute Ma Ville (aka Blow Up My Town ), made at the age of 18. If you like the show or what we do generally, consider throwing us a few bucks to help cover our costs: https://paypal.me/kateandsimonpod Our intro music is pe...