Guest Post by Jenni Olson
“Chantal Akerman committed suicide yesterday.” That was all I could manage to write in my journal on the evening of October 6, 2015. It was also my 53rd birthday that day, which may also partly explain my especially intense emotional response to her passing.
I read the news in bed that morning on my phone and was surprised, even in the moment, to find myself so deeply saddened. Crying as I skimmed the blossoming flood of Twitter posts, I was struck by the ability of so many people to find words for their grief so quickly. Good, thoughtful, moving words — some of which I dutifully re-tweeted, unable to form words of my own but wanting to participate in the enormous global shock and mourning. Wanting to lend my humble, yet hopefully somewhat authoritative voice to the chorus — to convey something about the magnitude of her genius as an artist. Yes, I did set my phone down initially. I possess the wisdom not to deny the immediate demands of grief, to confront the task in the moment.
Arising then to begin the day, preoccupied and still grappling to understand, I found myself trying to explain to my 12-year-old daughter Sylvie who Chantal Akerman was and why she was so important to me.
Since it was my birthday Sylvie had lovingly prepared a breakfast of soft-boiled eggs and toast soldiers for me (the secret, she explained as I ate, is to slice the bread before toasting for maximum crispness). These kinds of sensuous human rituals, so mundane and yet so transcendent — are the absolute fabric of our daily lives together. Elevating the importance of the mundane is the task of poetry, helping us to be able to even see the infinitesimally small gestures of our own lives. Akerman understood this and demonstrated radical courage in depicting these essential, existential things.
I spent the rest of the day functioning poorly in my day job — distractedly reading dozens of sad Akerman elegies and hundreds of cheerful Facebook birthday wishes. The day finally over, I had the incredible experience of watching “News From Home” that evening on Hulu, and realizing to my amazement that I had actually never seen it despite thinking that I had (and I realize now that it was “Hotel Monterey” I had seen long ago and all this time somehow, shameful true confession, had mixed them up). Of course I have seen many of her other works and have always considered her a huge influence on my own work — especially for her formal approach around lengthy shot duration and static camera and her affection for the mundane.
But seeing “News From Home,” especially at this moment in time, was such a revelation. It is uncanny that my own cinematic style of static, durational 16mm urban landscapes with voiceover is so much like her style in “News From Home.” (I make this comparison in the most humble way.) As the final twelve-minute shot of the Manhattan skyline with seagulls unspooled before my bewildered and bleary eyes I discovered that my new film, “The Royal Road,” pays an uncanny homage (though my concluding San Francisco skyline shot features only a single seagull and is just two-minutes long).
In one of her appreciations of Akerman years ago, New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis observed that calling “Jeanne Dielman” a feminist film is both true and reductive. While I find the next several days of Akerman tributes mainly heartening there is something about the constant mention of her as an important “woman filmmaker” that aggravates me. She is just so much more than this.
Akerman is deservedly celebrated for her portrayals of women characters and for elevating women’s stories and offering a unique female perspective in her films — she had many identities: Jewish, lesbian, Belgian. First and foremost though, she was a filmmaker with a singular vision whose distinctive approach to the possibilities of the medium encompassed a painstaking awareness of the smallest cinematic elements and their potential impact not just on conventional aspects of storytelling but on the emotional, psychological and physiological experience of the audience (of course I identify with this in my own filmmaking). She was a visionary artist whose distinctive approach expanded the cinematic form.
It is this consummate craftsmanship that produced such masterpieces as “Jeanne Dielman 23 quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles.” It is this craftsmanship that created so many stunning works of art that will change the way you see the world, and that will never leave you — even though their creator has. The traditional Jewish expression of condolence is somehow more touching and apt for her than I’ve ever known it to be before: May her memory be for a blessing.
Chantal Akerman died on October 5, 2015.
Jenni Olson is an acclaimed filmmaker, writer, archivist, LGBT film historian, and online pioneer. Since premiering at Sundance in 2015, her innovative feature-length essay film, “The Royal Road” — reflecting on an array of topics from the Spanish colonization of California to Alfred Hitchock’s “Vertigo” — has earned numerous awards including Best LGBTQ Film from the prestigious Ann Arbor Film Festival. “The Royal Road” is out now on DVD and digital. Visit WolfeVideo.com for more info.
