I appreciate Gene Youngblood’s observations. I would point out in addition some of the decisions Akerman made which shaped the reception of her work.
First, and I think incredibly importantly, was her choice of Babette Mongolte to be her cinematographer on Jeanne Dielman. Mongolte had already done the camerawork on Rainer’s Lives of Performers and Film About a Woman Who. Seeing those works as connected by visual sensibility gives the works at least a second “authorship” in the cinematographer. Second, Jeanne Dielman arrived in 1975-6. It was screened at some film centers and then the print left the country. Yeet during its brief appearance it inspired almost all the emerging feminist film makers, critics, scholars, teachers, and intellectuals to rave about it. And the writers wrote about it with a strong femiist analysis I think this was due to at least two factors, One was that feminist film criticism was looking for new work that escaped the Hollywood expectations. Remember this is the exact moment when Laura Mulvey’s landmark essay on "Visual Pleasure and Narrative CInema" hit the scene. Jeanne Dielman was the perfect film to see after or before reading Mulvey.. This was also the time of emerging feminist film festivals, feminist film courses in colleges and universities, feminist film programming being a regular part of film center programming, etc. Second, there was at that time a certain momentum in the women’s movement for thinking anew about housework and domestic space. In the UK one high profile group of feminists led a campaign for “Wages for Housework”—demanding recognition of women’s unpaid labor. In N. America there was an active discussion of the “double day” and women working outside the home but also then being totally responsible for domestic chores, cleaning, child-rearing, etc. So within the political wing of the women’s movement there was interest in this and Jeanne Dielman, although in one sense one of the “least likely” films to appeal to feminist activists unfamiliar with art film narrative in fact when they did get to see the film found it often intriguing and made them rethink what feminist film might be. But, as I said, that rare print disappeared from N. America and Akermann essentially rejected the genuine enthusiastic audience for her film and wasn’t interested in having it placed with some logical upstart feminist film distributors nor was she willing to deposit a copy with the NY Coop or Canyon, which would have at least kept it alive for those who wanted to show it. I never heard the story from her side of why she made this decision. The gossip I heard was that she had a very high opinion of herself and wanted to be treated as a Major European Film Artist like Wenders or Fassbinder. She was holding out for Big Time art film distribution in N. America. And that never happened. There’s an excellent (if kind of lopsided by her enthusiasms) presentation of that Ackerman moment in Ruby Rich’s book Chick Flicks: Theories and Memories of the Feminist Film Movement. The point being that artists have some role to play in their own reputation/success and some decisions end up shaping their critical horizon and artistic capital. On Oct 6, 2015, at 1:26 PM, Gene Youngblood <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Unless I’m mistaken, the American premiere of Jeanne Dielmann was at Filmex in 1976. That’s the Los Angeles International Film Exposition, which was the largest festival in the world at that time except for Cannes, which we considered to be a market, not a festival. I saw it twice, first on the selection committee, then at the festival, where it impressed me even more the second time. I met Chantal for lunch immediately after, somewhat disoriented that such a reserved, shy little person could have made this work of monumental intelligence and power. She was with Lloyd Cohn, whose fledgling company, World Artists (I think that’s the name), was the American distributor of the film. I met Lloyd ten years earlier when he was doing publicity for Monte Hellman’s remarkable westerns, The Shooting and Ride In the Whirlwind, which I reviewed in the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. The review attracted a considerable audience for the films (Cameron Mitchell took out a full page ad in Variety to thank me and Jack Nicholson, who wrote, co-produced and starred in both), and because of that Lloyd was “loyal” to me over the years, which is how I ended up having lunch with him and Chantal Akerman. Lloyd was a small person too, about the same height as Chantal, and I remember feeling conspicuous, being more than a foot taller than them, as we entered the restaurant. I don’t remember much of the conversation except about Godard and Michael Snow, and how perceptive Chantal’s observations were. (As an aside, I prefer her “One Day Pina Asked…” over Wim Wenders’ piece on Bausch). I’m not sure about this, but I think Lloyd Cohn distributed some of Chantal’s experimental shorts for a brief period of time, and maybe The Meetings of Anna, and then I lost track of him. I showed Jeanne Dielmann, The Meetings of Anna, Hotel Monterey, Je tu il elle, and I’m Hungry I’m Cold in various classes every year for about 20 years, first at Calarts, then the College of Santa Fe. There were always lively discussions, and a handful of students invariably wrote term papers on Jeanne Dielmann or Meetings of Anna or both. Chantal affected me as profoundly as she did many others, maybe even a few of my students. By the way, if anyone knows what Lloyd Cohn is doing these days, please contact me off list. Chuck Kleinhans
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