PARIS — The retrospective with multiple layers Chantal Akerman: Traveling at Jeu de Paume traces the career of the influential Belgian filmmaker from her beginnings in Brussels — including the Super 8 footage she submitted for admission to the art institute INSAS in 1967 and his first short film, the 1968 manic tragicomedy Skip my town (“Blow Up My Town”) — to his genre-defying documentary A voice in the desert (2002), which traces the fate of Mexican immigrants on the US-Mexico border.
As a filmmaker, writer, and visual artist, the late Akerman moved nimbly across styles and genres, her work relentlessly emphasizing the porosity between fiction and documentary, interior and exterior, tragedy and comedy, personal and political. She was also one of the first filmmakers to move from cinema to museum spaces, a move which – according to her long-time editor Claire Atherton – allowed her greater freedom and the pleasure of demanding more active participation from the viewer . It is precisely Akerman’s video installation work that is at the center of this exhibition.
“Woman Sitting after Killing” (2001) is the first work to greet the viewer: an installation on seven monitors showing the final shot of Akerman’s cinematic monument Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Brussels (1975), recently elected “the greatest movie of all time» by the British Film Institute’s influential Sight and Sound poll. But the seven-minute loop of the static shot of main character Jeanne sitting at a table in the dark, staring blankly ahead, seems muted – now isolated from the earlier murder scene, it fails to convey a sense of heightened tension, leaving a want the radical and fascinating 210-minute masterpiece. (Fortunately, the film is included in the screening program which accompanied the show.)
The exhibition particularly favors Akerman’s first installation “D’Est, au bord de la fiction” (1995). Occupying the central room of the upper galleries, the 25-channel adaptation of his 16 mm film From the East (1992) is a wonderful visual meditation on an Eastern Europe in ruins shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Through the maze of monitors, slow tracking shots glide through the crowds – mostly queuing and bathed in winter light – on the streets of East Germany, Poland, Ukraine and Russia.
Arranged as an archive room, the last gallery is anchored by a large table exhibiting a myriad of documents, most of them shown to the public for the first time – annotated scripts, administrative correspondence and press clippings – alongside extracts from television interviews for the film. visitors to browse. On the walls are production photos, location photos, maps and images from Akerman’s defining period in New York in the early ’70s, as well as documents from his travels in the American South and in Mexico, are presented alongside screenings of Akerman’s films. produced in the 1980s. This enriching display is worth spending time on, as it creates an emotional travelogue that traces Akerman’s trajectory. As well as shedding light on his creative process, it maps his rich network of long-time friends and collaborators such as cellist and long-time partner and musical collaborator Sonia Wieder-Atherton; his cameraman Luc Benhamou; and Jan Decorte, who plays Sylvain in Jeanne Dielmanamong other films. Given the lively engagement of the audience of twenty-somethings who filled the galleries during my visit, it became clear that the exhibition contributes to a renewed interest in the work of this revolutionary filmmaker among new generations.
Chantal Akerman: Traveling continues at the Jeu de Paume (1 Place de la Concorde, Jardin des Tuileries, Paris, France) through January 19, 2025. The exhibition was curated by Laurence Rassel and Marta Ponsa.
