Le 15/8

MOVIE #1,700 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 06.06.24 ALBERT & AKERMAN: AN AUTEURIST STUDY IN CONTRAST + CONTINUUM Part of the reason I have put so much time and effort (comparatively speaking!) into these Akerman and Pyun critiques is that I thought it would be good content to eventually compile these posts into a book. Part catalog, part inner monologue, part staggeringly beautiful prose about the beloved artform that is CIN•E•MA! (Maybe a 60/30/10 split, at best LOL). I would read this book. But — to be fair — I would read any book that features a cover which has photoshopped Chantal Akerman’s face onto the actor Matt Salinger’s body (in the Captain America costume) standing next to Albert Pyun on the set of Captain America (1990). Whether I wrote it or not! Anyway, this is a heads up to look out for the book version of Albert & Akerman coming sometime in the year 2037.

My problem is — when viewing this project as a BOOK — is that occasionally I just want to make an experimental song instead of writing a review…


And how would that ever translate in the form of literature?

Le 15/8 is the French title for a 42-minute movie that debuted at the 1975 Venice Biennale in Italy by a Belgium director featuring a Finnish woman in Paris speaking English in voiceover narration as she mopes around an apartment bored for the duration. This is an interesting followup to Jeanne Dielman in that it seems like one could almost view it as a precursor or vague prequel (it also feels somehow longer than Jeanne in a way!). But I just can’t help thinking about how the town I grew up in wants to gas their geese population…


As I’ve mentioned before in this BOOK, I live near a lake. So I can attest to the fact that the Canada goose (Branta canadensis) is in fact a menace. This boils down to an almost philosophical question re existence. We (humans) clearly think we’re better than the geese so why should we have to put up with their infinite shit (literally), not to mention their hissing at me and my dog. There is a communication divide here of the highest order and there’s simply no way of explaining to them that we don’t want to eat their children! [INSERT CONNECTION BACK TO MOVIE HERE: SOMETHING ALONG THE LINES OF "WOMEN DO BE FEELING LIKE GASSED GEESE TRAPPED IN THE HOUSE ALL DAY" ETC.]

This movie was co-directed by one Samy Szlingerbaum and that is just an A+ name/surname if there ever was one. I don’t have much else to say about the picture other than it is a quietly revealing variation on the filmmaker’s recurring themes of dislocation and alienation as the tone shifts between the mundane and the searching, all the while Akerman’s observant camera remains attuned to tiny gestures that tell a story of their own. But don’t take my word for it.

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CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,699 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,701 ⫸

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Shot and directed by Chantal Akerman and Samy Szlingerbaum. It was released on September 1, 1975.