262,789 research outputs found
The films of Chantal Akerman : a cinema of displacements
No full textThis thesis attempts to broaden the critical boundaries within which the films of
Chantal Akerman have been discussed. First, it extends analysis from Akerman's
70s to her 80s and 90s films. Second, it argues that as well as her gender and
aesthetic identities, Akerman's Belgian and Jewish identities should be
acknowledged. Finally, it suggests that each of these four identities: woman,
independent film-maker, Belgian and Jewish allow her a position of marginality,
figured in her films through the trope of 'displacement'.
The structure of the thesis is two-fold: it extends discussion of Akerman's cinema to
films not previously considered, and through this extension engages with
contemporary issues in film and cultural theory such as female authorship,
independent and national, and marginal cinemas. Chapter one `Woman' and chapter
two `Independent' extend the reading of gender and sexuality and formal and
aesthetic innovation in Akerman's cinema. In the first chapter this is done through
consideration of the films Golden Eighties (1986) and Nuit et jour (1990), while in
the second her short films, video work and work for television are examined.
My third and fourth chapters offer areas of Akerman's work which have not
previously been studied. Chapter three, `Belgian', considers the significance of
Akerman's nationality for her film-making while engaging with theories around
national cinema. It examines the possibility of a `Belgian national cinema' and the
intersections which arise between this and Akerman's cinema, especially around
Toute une nuit (1982). Finally, in my fourth chapter, `Jewish', I use Histoires
d'Amerigue (1989) and D'Est (1993) to argue that Akerman's is a `wandering'
cinema, in which she is constantly examining the homelessness and displacement
that her Jewishness engenders
Ram-pressure stripped galaxies in galactic-scale simulations
No full textGalaxies are complex systems that do not simply exist in isolation but are influenced by the environment in which they reside, particularly in rich clusters. Ram-pressure stripping (RPS) is one of environmental mechanisms that can promote both morphological and colour evolution of a galaxy. RPS removes the gas from galaxy infalling into a cluster which in turn leads to star-formation quenching. This Thesis aims to explore the evolution of RPS galaxies using high-resolution galaxy-scale simulations, and improve our understanding of the processes happening in these peculiar objects.
I run a suite of wind-tunnel hydrodynamical simulations of a massive disc galaxy falling into a massive cluster. The simulations include star formation and stellar feedback. I simulate four realisations of the same galaxy subject to the same intracluster medium (ICM) wind that hits the galaxy at different angles: face-on, edge-on and angled at 45o, and an control isolated galaxy.
First, I study whether RPS can enhance accretion onto a central black hole (BH) and trigger an active galactic nucleus (AGN). I find that RPS increases the inflow of gas to the galaxy centre regardless of the wind impact angle. I identify the mechanisms that drive the inflow as the mixing of interstellar medium (ISM) and non-rotating ICM and pressure torques. I also estimate the BH accretion using three accretion models. Although their parameters were chosen to estimate similar accretion rates in an isolated galaxy, all three models give different results in the galaxies subject to RPS. I argue that the commonly used accretion models cannot account for the RPS-induced mechanisms of gas transport.
Next, I evaluate the role of star formation and stellar feedback in gas stripping. I use the same set of four star-forming galaxies, and simulate four other radiative-cooling-only (RC) identical galaxies. I directly compare the stripping evolution of galaxies with and without star formation. I find that stellar feedback has no direct effect on the stripping process. Instead, it homogenises the ISM, which makes the stripping proceed in an outside-in way in line with observations. The density distribution in a RC galaxies is dominated by overdense clumps embedded in low-density ‘holes’, and stripping is under- and overestimated in certain parts of a galaxy, leading to an overall erroneous picture of RPS. Overall, in a massive galaxy the effect of stellar feedback on the stripping rate is almost negligible.
I also study in-situ star formation in the stripped tails, using the face-on and angled-wind galaxies from the same set of simulations. Generally, stars are formed as a result of outside-in stripping. They have decreasing metallicities the farther they are from the disc as a result of gradual mixing between ISM and ICM. Not all stars follow this model, and there is a population of stars born from the gas that is falling back onto the galaxy. These stars can arrange themselves into ‘inverse fireballs’. Almost all of the tail stars will fall on the galaxy, and will not contribute to the intracluster light. I present images that mock UV observations, which show that the vertical distribution of stars in galaxies that have been completely stripped is not significantly broader than in an isolated galaxy.
Finally, I present a new set of simulations that include a BH particle with AGN feedback in the form of jets. The initial conditions and overall set-up and identical to the previous simulations, and I directly compare evolution of galaxies with and without a BH. The actual BH particles accrete more gas than what is analytically estimated in the simulations without a BH. AGN feedback acts to suppress star formation globally, evidence suggests that it also prevents ICM accretion onto the galaxy. I also simulate a galaxy subject to face-on ICM wind, and find that a galaxy with a BH is stripped slower than a galaxy without one independently of how often AGN feedback is ejected
Chantal Akerman, entre autoethnographie et banal : un féminisme des interstices.
No full textChantal Akerman is generally considered a feminist cineast by the commentators of her work, especially regarding her 1976 film Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. This film perfectly fits into the cognitive orientation of the women’s movement of the second wave in politicizing domestic work. I argue in this article that the feminist point of view of the author is graspable in two cinematic dispositives used throughout her work: firstly, the way she forces us to look at the banal generally devalued, and secondly, the autoethnographic component of her cinema affirming the fluidity of the subject and a situated point of view. Chantal Akerman is precursor of a practice theorized since the 1980s as a consequence of the « Crisis of representation », consisting in shifting the focus from to Other to the self
The slow film principles in selected films by Chantal Akerman
No full textVe své bakalářské práci se věnuji dvěma vybraným dokumentárním filmům belgické režisérky Chantal Akerman. Cílem této práce je analyzovat filmovou řeč ve filmech D'Est a De l'autre côté a zkoumat jejich souvislost s žánrem pomalého kinematografie.
Zajímá mě, jak Chantal Akerman v těchto filmech specificky zachází s časem a délkou trvání záběru, a jaké používá formálními prostředky k podněcování divácké imaginace. Budu zkoumat, zda je možné v dokumentárních filmy Chantal Akerman pozorovat principy, které bývají přisuzovány pomalé kinematografii.In my bachelor thesis I focus on two documentary films by Belgian director Chantal Akerman. The aim of this work is to analyze the film language used in the films D'Est (1993) and De l'autre côté (2002) and explore their connection to the genre of slow cinema.
I am interested in how Chantal Akerman specifically works with time and duration of takes in these films, and how she uses formal means to stimulate audience imagination. I will examine whether it is possible to observe the principles that are attributed to slow cinematography in Akerman's documentary films
Chantal Akerman
No full textIn this work I am focusing on the personality of Belgian director and screenwriter Chantal Akerman and her style in the movies Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles and La Bas. I chose these two between many for different reasons. These are one of her first movies and one of her last ones, however there is a strong bond between them.
Both movies are similar in how the main character ? a woman who stays at her home better than anything else ? is perceived by the audience. Both women are happy in their stereotypical life and they are fully dedicated to the everyday house chores which stands for some kind of therapy to them. None of these two women is realizing this obvious fact though.
I use these two very personal movies to point out the main topics in Akerman's work. I also use a theory of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to explain the character of Jeanne Dielman more
Aesthetics of Care: Caring for the Mother with Chantal Akerman
No full textCaring for the other is an ethical as well as an aesthetic question: but where does one end and where does the other begin? Rita Charon, in her work Narrative Medicine (2006), builds a strong case against such separation in medical care, or more precisely, against the negligence of what she calls “narrative competence”—defined as the ability to absorb, interpret, and translate stories of others. Charon compares the work of health professionals to that of a skilled translator, who reads not only words but also silences and metaphors. While Charon focuses primarily on developing the concept of care as aesthetic experience for health professionals, Yuriko Saito’s recent publication Aesthetics of Care (2022) draws a parallel between care ethics in general and aesthetic experience. Both, according to Saito, share the same attitudes such as open-mindedness, receptivity, respect, and collaborative spirit. In this paper, I will discuss the concept of care in Belgian film director Chantal Akerman’s later works: My Mother Laughs (2019) and No Home Movie (2015). Through different media—the former being a memoir and the latter a documentary—Akerman cares for her mother and bears witness to the end of her mother’s life. Taking cues from Charon and Saito, I argue that both media are media of care: they are aesthetic means of bearing witness to illness, trauma, love, and care. Especially through filmmaking, Akerman seems to have achieved the impossible: that is, the desire of the daughter not to take her eyes off her dying mother and look at her eternally. Such desire is also expressed in her film aesthetics: the long take inscribes a waiting becoming infinite; it is as if the movie, or the motion picture, is exposed to both a slow death and a passage to eternity. At the same time, unlike Charon and Saito, who position the carer as an ideal reader and viewer, I argue that Akerman as the carer is by no means perfect: her memoir offers a detailed account of her need to keep a distance and hide from her mother, and of her mother’s complaint about Akerman not sharing her life with her. Distance is what Akerman struggles with regarding her relation to her mother, and she struggles with it through writing and filming. In Akerman’s case, the ability to achieve the impossible with aesthetic media lies precisely in mediation and mediality: they enable a relation of care that is close, yet still maintains a safe distance
It came in little waves : Feminist Imagery in Chantal Akerman\u27s Je, Tu, Il, Elle +
No full textChantal Akerman writes, “she who seeks shall find, find all too well, and end up clouding her vision with her own preconceptions.”[1] This thesis addresses the films of Chantal Akerman from a theoretical feminist film perspective. There are many lenses through which Akerman’s rich body of work can be viewed, and I would argue that she herself never intended for it to be understood in just one way. I wish to situate Akerman’s films, in particular her 1974 Je, Tu, Il, Elle (1h 30m), within a discourse of other feminist film theorists and makers that were further rooted in the women\u27s movement of the 1960s. Using this framework, I will argue that Akerman not only addressed the calls of these feminist scholars, but also exceeded their breadth, by drawing attention to, and working across, boundaries, in addition to dismantling patriarchal narrative conventions.
[1] Chantal Akerman “On D’Est.” In Bordering Fiction: Chantal Akerman’s “D’Est,” ed. Kathy Kalbreich and Bruce Jenkins. (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1995)
Between Les Rendez-vous d’Anna and Demain on Déménage: m(o)ther inscriptions in two films by Chantal Akerman
No full textIn the opening sequence of Chantal Akerman’s 2004 film Demain on Déménage (Tomorrow
We Move) a grand piano hangs upside down high in the air against a clear blue sky. Sharp
intakes and exhalations of breath register tension and anticipation (like the delicate
beginnings of an orgasm), as the instrument sways and creaks on its straps in its movement
through the air. The sounds issue from the mouth of the actress Aurore Clément, and right
away I recognise her as the character Anna Silver from Les Rendez-vous d’Anna, a film made
by Akerman in 1978 in which Clément plays the role of a daughter. The flash of recognition
collapses nearly two decades of Akerman’s films in an instant as the actress’ roles as
daughter and mother are superimposed in the mind. Simultaneously it involves, unavoidably,
the perception of the gradual work of time on Clément’s physiognomy. I am affected by its
subtle reconfiguration of her beauty, a fascination that offers a counter movement to the
exchange of Clément’s fictional role from daughter to mother, one that stretches rather than
collapses time in contemplation of the actual biological process of aging on the actress’s face
as the camera moves in close to register its responses to the progress of the character’s
beloved piano swinging towards its new location
"The Magic Mirror" Uncanny Suicides, from Sylvia Plath to Chantal Akerman
No full textArtists such as Chantal Akerman and Sylvia Plath, both of whom came of age in mid-twentieth century America, have a tendency to show concern with doubles in their work—Toni Morrison’s Beloved , Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon, Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman—and oftentimes situate their protagonists as doubles of themselves, carefully monitoring the distance they create between themselves and their double. This choice acts as a kind of self-constitution, by which I mean a self-fashioning that works through an imperfect mirroring of the text’s author presented as a double in a fictional work. Texts that employ self-constitution often show a concern with liminality, mirroring, consumption, animism, repressed trauma, suicide, and repetition. It is the goal of this thesis to examine these motifs in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and the early work of Chantal Akerman, all of which coalesce to create coherent—but destabilizing—texts that propose a new queer subject position, and locate the death drive—the desire to return to the mother’s womb—as their source. I will examine the uncanny on various levels, zooming out from the micro-level elements of the text to its broader relationship to its environment: from rhetoric, to the physical landscapes of the texts, to characters of the text, to the structure of the text (as confined by its frame), and then, finally, outside the text itself, to the author’s relationship with her double. What I will argue here is that Akerman and Plath—in doubling on both the extradiegetic and intradiegetic levels of their work—propose a queer liminal space that siphons and ultimately expels repressed uncanny desire, allowing for both self-sustainability and personal integrity
“The Magic Mirror”: Uncanny Suicides, From Sylvia Plath to Chantal Akerman
No full textM.A.Artists such as Chantal Akerman and Sylvia Plath, both of whom came of age in mid-twentieth century America, have a tendency to show concern with doubles in their work—Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon, Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman—and oftentimes situate their protagonists as doubles of themselves, carefully monitoring the distance they create between themselves and their double. This choice acts as a kind of self-constitution, by which I mean a self-fashioning that works through an imperfect mirroring of the text’s author presented as a double in a fictional work. Texts that employ self-constitution often show a concern with liminality, mirroring, consumption, animism, repressed trauma, suicide, and repetition.It is the goal of this thesis to examine these motifs in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and the early work of Chantal Akerman, all of which coalesce to create coherent—but destabilizing—texts that propose a new queer subject position, and locate the death drive—the desire to return to the mother’s womb—as their source. I will examine the uncanny on various levels, zooming out from the micro-level elements of the text to its broader relationship to its environment: from rhetoric, to the physical landscapes of the texts, to characters of the text, to the structure of the text (as confined by its frame), and then, finally, outside the text itself, to the author’s relationship with her double. What I will argue here is that Akerman and Plath—in doubling on both the extradiegetic and intradiegetic levels of their work—propose a queer liminal space that siphons and ultimately expels repressed uncanny desire, allowing for both self-sustainability and personal integrity
- …
