Akerman – in english

Between her first short film, “Saute ma ville” (1968), and “No Home Movie” (2015), Chantal Akerman (1950-2015) directed over forty films. The impact of “Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles,” a 3-hour and 20-minute masterpiece she filmed at the age of 25 with Delphine Seyrig, ensured her immediate fame. The role that women play in her work led to her being identified as a feminist filmmaker, a description she welcomed but with reservation, like any form of labeling. From the 1990s onwards, Chantal Akerman was also the first filmmaker to explore contemporary art spaces: her installations have regularly been exhibited in galleries and museums in Europe, the United States, Israel, Latin America, and Japan.
Her cinematic work is complemented by a significant body of written work, nearly 1600 pages which we are publishing almost entirely. The editing has been entrusted to Cyril Béghin. This collection is presented in the form of three volumes housed in a box set: two chronological volumes (1968-1991 and 1991-2015), dedicated to Akerman’s texts, and a third that gathers the critical edition. This choice allows the filmmaker’s writing to develop with its own articulations and rhythm, without external intervention. The two Akerman volumes include not only screenplays, synopses, intentions notes, texts for the voiceovers of her films, but also mostly unpublished interviews and working documents. They include four books published during Akerman’s lifetime: a play, “Hall de nuit” (1992), two narratives, “Une famille à Bruxelles” (1998) and “Ma mère rit” (2013), and an autobiography, “Le frigidaire est vide. On peut le remplir” (in “Autoportrait en cinéaste,” 2004).
Through their rhythm, their punctuation, the freedom of syntax she uses and the “rehashing” that she herself claims as being both a quirk and a constructive principle, her texts bear the mark of her voice: the work is both written and spoken (she gave numerous readings of her narratives). The first two volumes are accompanied by a largely unpublished iconography. The third gathers Cyril Béghin’s presentation, a chronology, as well as his notes on Akerman’s texts, the exhaustive list of the filmmaker’s films and installations, and a selection of her published books, texts, and interviews.

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Cyril Béghin writes on cinema for journals, catalogs, and collective works. He was an editor at Cahiers du cinéma from 2004 to 2020 and a member of its editorial board from 2009 to 2020. He directed the edition of Dialogues by Marguerite Duras and Jean-Luc Godard (Post-éditions, 2014) and Notes from the Fortress by Robert Kramer (Post-éditions, 2019). From 2003 to 2013, he co-directed monographic works published by Magic Cinéma (Bobigny), including one dedicated to Chantal Akerman, about whom he has published numerous texts and interviews in journals and catalogs.