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"Delphine Seyrig complained that there was so much detail she didn’t have to invent anything."
Chantal AkermanWhen you read a text, you’re on your own time. That is not the case in — Chantal Akerman
"When you read a text, you’re on your own time. That is not the case in film. In fact, in film, you’re dominated by my time. But time is different for everyone. Five minutes isn’t the same thing for you as it is for me. And five minutes sometimes seems long, sometimes seems short. Take a specific film, say, D’Est: I imagine the way each viewer experiences time is different. And on my end, when I edit, the timing isn’t done just any way. I draw it out to the point where we have to cut. Or take another example, News from Home: How much time should we take to show this street so that what’s happening is something other than a mere piece of information? So that we can go from the concrete to the abstract and come back to the concrete—or move forward in another way. I’m the one who decides. At times I’ve shot things and I’ve said, "Now this is getting unbearable!" And I’ll cut. For News from Home it’s something else, but I have a hard time explaining it."
Chantal Akerman
Chantal Akerman
author2011–201515 quotes
Chantal Anne Akerman was a Belgian filmmaker, artist, and film professor at the City College of New York (2011–2015).
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"A lot of it came unconsciously. [...] When I wrote it, it ran like a river."
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"I sometimes think I should have made it after many other films, at the end of my career. [...] I remember saying to myself, how can I make a better film? But it was also exactly the film I had to make then. It says something about a woman, about a way of living a life, about life after the war. It was the first thing I had to pour out of myself. [...] I would have changed nothing about it."
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"Jeanne has to organize her life, to not have any space, any time, so she won’t be depressed or anxious [...] She didn’t want to have one free hour because she didn’t know how to fill that hour."
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"[A male client of the lead character, a part-time prostitute, is stabbed with scissors near the end of the film.] In most movies you have crashes or accidents or things out of the ordinary, so the viewer is distracted from his own life. [...] This film is about his own life."
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"[On directing Jeanne Dielman aged 25.] It’s not very modest of me, but I’m still so proud I did it at that age."
Chantal Akerman