Neuropsychologists talk about flash memories. Or the accurate and vivid memory of the circumstances in which the information was obtained. Older people remember exactly what they were doing and where they were when the death of JFK or Marilyn Monroe was announced. The same goes for the fall of the Berlin Wall, the 9/11 attacks, or one day, who knows? –, the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
For movie buffs there is a special date, loaded with a particular emotion: the premiere of Jeanne Dielman, or rather Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Brussels in its full title, a film by Chantal Akerman, released in theaters in France in 1976.
Each one has his memory, his flash. Laura Mulvey, one of the most influential British film critics of the 20th centurymy century, at the origin of the concept of male chiffon (erotic vision of actresses by male directors), this screening is still revived at the Edinburgh festival, in Scotland, in August 1975, and “the overwhelming feeling of watching a movie like no one has done before”. It was in Champollion, a famous cinema in the Latin Quarter of Paris, where the actress Sylvie Testud discovered him in the 1990s, before working with Chantal Akerman in The captive (2000) and tomorrow we move (2004). “An indescribable shock. »
The essayist Hélène Frappat, author of the essay Gaslighting or the art of silencing women (L’Observatoire, 2023), I had seen it in “a VHS transmitted by someone” in the late 1990s As for the cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton, who would become the filmmaker’s partner, she still laughs at these two ladies in line at a New York movie theater in the early 1980s, which . “I was sorry I didn’t bring a sandwich.” discovering the duration of the movie. Jeanne Dielman It lasts three hours and twenty minutes.
The most famous feature film by the Belgian filmmaker, born in 1950 and died in 2015, is the story of three days in the life of a housewife, played by Delphine Seyrig, widow and mother of a teenager. In a series of photographs, the camera shows her dressed in a checked apron or wool vest, shopping, shining shoes, peeling potatoes, breading chops. And, every afternoon, prostitute themselves.
Quoted by Gus Van Sant or Alice Diop
who saw Jeanne Dielman ? Not many people. When it was released in January 1976, at the same time as Jaws, by Steven Spielberg, only a few thousand go to the movies. For a long time, the film remained “This myth is only shared by movie buffs,” according to Hélène Frappat. “A well-kept secret, darling.” confides curator Marta Ponsa, who worked with curator Laurence Rassel on the vast retrospective currently dedicated to Chantal Akerman at the Jeu de Paume, in Paris.
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