👤 Chantal Akerman (1950-2015), Belgian film-maker

Chantal Akerman: Afterlives
Edited by Marion Schmid and Emma Wilson
Moving Image 9•23 April 2019

  • ‘What I like in Schmid and Wilson’s book is the breadth of content it offers. It is not a book about the “usual” subjects we speak about in the context of Akerman’s cinema. There is work on the director’s installations; there is work on, yes, ageing and smoking; there is work on what Albertine Fox calls “vocal landscapes”; and there is also work on Akerman’s use of light in Cyril Béghin’s excellent chapter Light out of Joint.’ — Nadin Mai, The Art(s) of Slow Cinema 5 July 2019
  • ‘Afterlives is an array of incredibly rich, beautiful, creative, and often deeply emotional responses to filmmaker, writer and artist Chantal Akerman's later works, looking with much needed detail attention to the final two decades of Akerman's creative output.’ — Ros Murray, Modern and Contemporary France 28.1, 2019, 175-76 (full text online)
  • ‘Together these essays resonate as similar tropes, films, and installations recur in new configurations. It is a testament to the artist, and to the editors, that new thought continues to illuminate Akerman’s oeuvre.’ — Ivone Margulies, H-France 20, May 2018, no. 66
  • ‘The diverse theoretical frameworks utilized in the essays allow for interdisciplinary discussions of Akerman’s oeuvre and propose new approaches for film studies. Elegantly written, this publication will interest scholars of European cinema, documentaries, multimedia art, cinematic adaptations of nineteenth-century literature, cultural memory, and the Holocaust.’ — Tessa Nunn, French Review 94.4, May 2021, 274-75 (full text online)

Autobiographical Reenactment in French and Belgian Film: Repetition, Memory, Self
Tom Cuthbertson
Moving Image 12•28 April 2022

Luxury, Sensation and the Moving Image
Alice Blackhurst
Moving Image 13•10 December 2021

  • ‘IT SITS THERE like a pale gemstone on your lap: the tall, slim, Instagrammable volume you waited for. You hold it close, you hold it tight (bluish-green, mauvish-gray), and you take a quick snapshot with your iPhone. On the cover, a redhead Delphine Seyrig is washing up, slowly massaging the nape of her neck with a striped flannel, an undeniably luscious caress. Quickly, friends ignite small fires under your post. They too know you’re going to read this work on Chantal Akerman, Annie Ernaux, Louise Bourgeois, and Sophie Calle. The title is enticing, promising: Luxury, Sensation and the Moving Image. So chic, so niche, so feminist. Le feu!’ — Adèle Cassigneul, Los Angeles Review of Books 4 May 2023
  • ‘Her corpus is comprised of four artists, all women, with a chapter devoted to each: Chantal Akerman, Annie Ernaux, Louise Bourgeois, and Sophie Calle. [...] Her four artists are a formidable group to consider together, and I applaud attention to a sampling of these fascinating works: Akerman’s Je tu il elle and Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai de Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles; Ernaux’s Passion simple and Se Perdre; Bourgeois’s soft sculptures, as well as some ofher bronzes and plaster works, and her Insomnia Drawings; and Calle’s Suite vénitienne, Douleur exquise and Prenez soin de vous. Blackhurst’s project embraces theoretical positivity that rests on citation of Gilles Deleuze and Jean-Luc Nancy, philosophers who bring creative positive energy to reimagining thought.’ — Maureen Turim, H-France 23 (August 2023), no. 138