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foggy eyes wrote:

Yojimbo wrote:I have the Akerman box-set, although I haven't gotten around to watching 'Jeanne Dielman' yet

Save your first viewing for the theatre! There's a couple of screenings in London in March too, hopefully of this new print. Has it screened with an interval at Film Forum?

sidehacker wrote:I forgot all about "crowds" - which sounds like a joke, but whenever I vision myself watching this in a theater (which I will be in a couple of weeks) I think of it being completely empty. Unlikely, but what a blessing that would be! I just hope everyone else that attends knows what to expect. The crowd at my Ashes of Time viewing was pretty restless, and there's action and camera movements in that movie. Oh well, l'll just hope for the best.

foggy eyes wrote:I sort-of-agree with Barmy, but would suggest that it is not so much a "lack" but a sustained application of variation (difference) that disrupts the process of repetition.

King Prendergast wrote:It's "structural" film, structuralism is something altogether different.

backstreetsbackalright wrote:I'm no expert on structuralism, but wouldn't this also apply to Wavelength?

Hopefully Criterion will reprint Ben Singer's 1989 essay Jeanne Dielman: Cinematic Interrogation and ‘Amplification’ (Millennium Film Journal 22, 56-75) in the booklet - it's one of the best, and most accessible, pieces of rigorous formal analysis that I know of. Manny Farber & Patricia Patterson's Kitchen Without Kitsch (Film Comment 13.6, 1977, 47-50) would make a great counterpoint. They could be bundled together as "theory", just like the (great) Zavattini & Bazin pieces for Bicycle Thieves...

Chantal Akerman’s film is important for feminism because it resolutely refuses to present us with the security of the reverse shot of classic representation and instead foregrounds the “thetic” aspect of the field of vision, the Symbolic Order, in all its harshness on the body of the woman as other, woman as non-male. In so doing it reveals the fragility of such a Symbolic Order by the over-inscription of absence and by the inscription of the drives as “elsewhere.” The film’s inscription of the asymmetry opens up the possibility of a different Symbolic order, a different mode of articulation between the Imaginary and the Symbolic beyond the frame, the diegesis and our field of vision –but nevertheless present

King Prendergast wrote:Or perhaps Claire Johnston's canonical article "Towards a Feminist Film Practice: Some Theses," reprinted in Movies and Methods, Vol. II, which makes some important claims about the formal construction of the film and how it relates to 70s Screen theory.

When did you first meet?
Around the time that I was writing the proposal, Annette Michelson had invited me to Middleburry College watch all of Akerman’s films. I didn’t stay very long, I just went to watch the films, and that’s where I met her. If I said, “Oh, I admire your work,” her response was, “Go make a film.” She can be very direct. But she’s not someone who likes academics and she didn’t know what I was going to write so she was very skeptical and averse to the whole idea. The whole approach she had to American scholars wasn’t very positive.

In what sense?
Well, at that point, I think there was a very strong discourse about form and ideology. My problem was to bring up the formal issues in a way that I felt were not subservient to this feminist discourse, which I didn’t think was the main one to discuss. And some accused me of being a formalist.

Most academic film writing suffers precisely because it doesn’t pay attention to form.
I think so, too. My weakest work is when I try to discuss an idea without paying attention to the form. I don’t see the two as separate. Formalism for me is someone like Bordwell, who really is describing a shot; he’s so good at what he does, and it’s helpful. I’m not putting it down at all, but formalism ends there. You can’t be halfway. If you’re fully a formalist, you’re not just a formalist. There’s a way in which you need to return to the filmmaker, to what she is doing, and to be particular. I’m an auteurist in that sense; I think that people have their signature and that it cannot be forged. And that comes back to the idea of the long take, and questioning why are there people that are weaker at using it than others. And Akerman, too, is not always good. There are points where she seems almost Mannerist.

Dazza wrote:I can't believe it was on in NFT2 - hands-down the worst of the three main screens there (only one aisle... ) , and for a film of that length I think that was a terrible choice for one, let alone both screenings.
Much as I'd like to see JD in a cinema, I had to pass on that chance, and in the end just bought the DVD.

foggy eyes wrote:

Dazza wrote:I can't believe it was on in NFT2 - hands-down the worst of the three main screens there (only one aisle... ) , and for a film of that length I think that was a terrible choice for one, let alone both screenings.
Much as I'd like to see JD in a cinema, I had to pass on that chance, and in the end just bought the DVD.

It was well worth it - the difference (in level of detail and quality of light) between the DVD and new 35mm print is breathtaking. If another opportunity presents itself, don't miss out!

TheGodfather wrote:Really looking forward to this one, the supplements sound excellent!

zedz wrote:Shock! Horror! Criterion are doing another Benjamin Button!

Fiery Angel wrote:

zedz wrote:Shock! Horror! Criterion are doing another Benjamin Button!

I thought the same thing when I saw the extras.