Akermania

• Very relevant to Akerman in the way that Matsumoto blurred the lines between fact and fiction
• He believed that avant-garde neo-documentary was the only truly revolutionary filmmaking practice
• Like Akerman, he denied a purely objective truth, and instead focused on the viewer's subjectivity, unsettling their habitual perception, and implicating them in the construction of meaning
• The sections on Vertov and Godard would also be relevant, but I find the connection to Matsumoto more compelling

• Sources like to say that Akerman did not consider Jeanne Dielman to be a feminist film, but in this interview she explicitly says that she does think it is a feminist film. I think this is an important point to note, because it seems like a lot of people have misinterpreted her stance on this. Not wanting to be pigeonholed as a feminist filmmaker is not the same as not thinking that her work is feminist.
• This interview also directly discusses her thoughts on respect, which is often cited as a key driver behind the distanced filming style
• She says that there is only one subjective shot in her films (up to 1977 of course), which is when she looks at the back of the driver's neck in Je, tu, il, elle.
• She also talks about how "The Beloved Child, or I Play at Being a Married Woman" was a failure due to using duration for mood rather than presence
• Akerman draws the parallel between Jeanne Dielman and Madame Bovary
• She invokes the idea of the unconscious, as Jeanne no longer has the strength to uphold the barrier between herself and her unconscious after she has an orgasm
• She directly addresses the criticism of the murder scene, saying that it is a logical outcome of the film rather than her falling into the need for a sensational climax
• She also discusses "jouissance du voir"/scopophilia

• Akerman says she had only seen a couple of Warhol films, counter to what a some sources say about her being heavily influenced by his work
• Her words about cutting when she feels the shot is finished reminds me of the Every Frame a Painting video essay on editing
• The oscillation between seeing symbolic objects and pure colour is something like dipping between Lacanian registers
• The way she describes Michael Snow's films and the difference between them and her own is very interesting. She was obviously heavily influenced by him, as visible in La chambre, Moving In, The Day When, etc., but clearly considers herself apart from the more purely conceptual structuralist approach. I am reminded of this Letterboxd review by Jake Cole of News from Home: "It's too easy and reductive to say of Akerman that she, in comparison to her male contemporaries, found the heart beating within structuralism [...] it is more accurate to say that the director best understood the applications of structuralism not merely to cinema formalism but to the patterns of quotidian life."
• Akerman disagrees with Paul Morrissey that characters are always revealed through dialogue. She says they are also revealed through gesture, from the back, from every side, and can be revealed even when offscreen.
• Akerman believes that characters must have some kind of secret that is held in order to drive curiosity in the viewer. Even further, the secret is not held by the character, but by the actor. This seems to interact with various ideas about desire, from Lacan and Proust. It is very visible in La captive.
• She planned at some point to do an adaptation of The Manor (1967) by Isaac Bashevis Singer
• Akerman references Deleuze & Guattari's book on Kafka, where "minor literature" is discussed, which is very relevant as you could see her films as part of a "minor cinema"

• This will be updated with random musings as I slowly make my way through the book
• I think this is a very relevant book to Akerman's work, especially in terms of the way she captures time and memory, and of course because of her adaptation of The Prisoner in The Captive
• Desire seems formulated in a similar way to many of Akerman's films, in that it is unattainable, but deeply yearned for, like the dream of a lover that is shattered upon waking

• Short article preceding an interview with Akerman
• There is a strong, terse description of how the film constructs subjectivity through non-traditional means

• I have not read this yet, but the essay "The Fourth Person Singular (Je Tu Il Elle)" by Jean Narboni references it and I loved the quote he uses from it.

I have not read this yet, but Akerman references it directly for its discussion of the mother tongue, and the idea of "minor literature" is very applicable to Akerman's "minor cinema".

• Uses the term "personal pronouncements" to describe the fictions that Akerman creates in these two films, because it "conjoins autobiography and enunciation to point towards a revelation of the intimate"
• Apparently "personal pronouncements" was the original title of Je, tu, il, elle in the US release
• The way that this says all personal filmmaking borders on autobiography is very true to Akerman's work in particular, both through her presence as an actor, and substitution in many of her films (or substitutions for her mother)
• Akerman's self suffuses the film even though she seemingly covers it in a veneer of fiction, and this is achieved TODO more
• Invokes the psychoanalytic concept of "acting out" (mettre en acte, ageren), indicating "actions taken by a subject in the grip of [their] unconscious wishes and fantasies"
• The way the essay discusses the alternation between the textual character's voice and the authorial voice reminds me of the way Margulies describes oscillation between literal and figurative registers
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• Reading about the World Trade Center in things from before 9/11 is weird
• Ground-level observation of a city is very different from the lofty viewpoint of a skyscraper, not like a "voyeur-god"
• Akerman focuses on the minor dwelling spaces rather than major landmarks
• The idea of bodies and cities having a reciprocal relationship of construction and writing-on is very interesting
• Takes ideas from de Certeau's "Walking in the City" and applies them to Akerman's work
• Walking in the city as an analogue for the act of speaking is also very interesting
• Addresses Giuliana Burno's idea of "the touristic gaze"
• Defines the architect-subject as generally male and the pedestrian-subject as generally female
• Identifies the spaces hidden at the high vantage point as female, by way of the female gendering of "chora" (via Elizabeth Grosz); I'm not sure I totally buy this, but it's something to ponder
• I love this essay, it's so good

• Discusses the use of background noise as a crucial element of the film; how it lends the film intensity and is "at the threshold of word-formation"
• Looks at the way the third segment defies pornographic conventions of sex through its violence, the sounds, the way the act is announced as limited in time, but especially through the static camera
• The static camera, he argues, goes against the usual pornographic conventions of using a multiplicity of shots to create a sense of excitement and of the limitless possibilities of the act
• Akerman instead, he suggests, illustrates Lacan's ideas of two bodies being unable to become "One" (l'Un)
• He references Kafka's metaphor of nut cracking from "Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk" to describe the way the film uses seemingly mundane techniques and events in a way that invokes intrigue and discussion, so there must be something non-mundane underlying them.
• The part of this essay I struggle with is the concept of the "fourth person singular"
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I have not read this yet, just come across quotes in the essay "The feminine side of New York: travelogue, autobiography and architecture in News from Home", but it seems very interesting. That essay seems to focus on the "Walking in the City" chapter.

• I haven't read this yet, but it seems like it could be very relevant to my research on postmemorial objects in Akerman's work

• Sylvain as the representative figure of patriarchy—I agree with this idea in that he is part of the structure that holds her captive so to speak, but he does not hold hierarchical power over her as an active oppressor. You could read this as a form of oppression-from-beneath, or a comment on the quieter ways in which patriarchy operates, so I think there's some interesting nuance there that isn't looked at in this essay
• The precision of the details of the title giving the illusion of a heightened objectivity, without actually giving us any sense of her identity
• The notion of "penetrating" the bedroom, which the camera is not allowed to do right until the penultimate scene
• The distance and objectivity used to record the violence being the same as the usual household routine
• How to define elusive interiority
• Rather than the formal techniques employed representing a sense of interiority, the camera is held at a distance, and the interiority is represented by the performance and text
• Denying a "point-of-view" perspective and instead being an observer
• Subjectivity constructed through sustained duration that invite's the viewer's speculation about Jeanne's thoughts
• Says that Jeanne's "desires escape articulation", which I think is connected to Lacanian ideas of desire and lack, l'objet petit a, etc.
• Discusses the absolute truth of an event, how the film conceptualises this as impossible, and that it places the viewer in the centre of meaning-making rather than being authoritative
• This last point also reminds me of Toshio Matsumoto's ideas about subjectivity and involving the viewer in meaning-making to push for political engagement
• Posits that the film's action forces the viewer to contemplate female sexuality as a key to unlocking the film's textual meaning: female pleasure is made into an interpretive framework
• Uses the term "knot of speculation" to describe the way the film's action is structured, which I think is a very apt description

I have not read this yet, just come across quotes in the essay "The feminine side of New York: travelogue, autobiography and architecture in News from Home", but this is where that essay gets the idea of the close-to-the-streets urban space as feminine from.