Let’s close our eyes, and listen to the sound of the first moments of Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Brussels (1975), masterpiece of the Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman (1950-2015). Let’s pretend we don’t know the story of this heroine, played by Delphine Seyrig, raising her son alone since the death of her husband, and prostituting herself between two household chores. Right from the start, we hear the hum of a gas stove, the clicking of women’s heels on the tiles, the percussive sound of a lid being placed on a casserole dish, and suddenly the shrill call of the doorbell. A door opens, followed by two « bonjour »first the woman, then the man, then the rustling of a cloth, a few more steps that seem to move away, the creaking of a door, and finally a few seconds of silence.
Read the meeting: Article reserved for our subscribers Emmanuel Coutris, a blind man, describes how, at the cinema, he sometimes has the “feeling of being part of the scene”
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Jeanne Dielman… will be screened on June 29, as well as July 2 and 4, at the La Rochelle Cinéma festival (from June 28 to July 7), in audio-described version for visually impaired or blind people, as part of a retrospective devoted to Chantal Akerman – spectators will be able to listen to the audio description text with headphones.
Many things have been said about this radical film, choreographing the precise gestures of this woman, her routine, which will become distorted during a meeting with a client. But rarely has the sound been so dissected, during the audio-described version produced by Marie Diagne, former editor.
The “eyes from within”
We witnessed two phases of this masterful work, in February, then in April, in the presence of a blind film buff, Emmanuel Coutris, who shared his feelings while listening to the first draft of the writing. “Chantal Akerman strongly believed in the experience of the spectator’s body in the cinema. I totally agree with this idea”comments Marie Diagne.
Read the obituary: Filmmaker Chantal Akerman has died
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For this film buff who runs workshops with all types of audiences, a visually impaired person is above all a cinema spectator, exploring the film with their “eyes from within” : “When we are in a room, we feel a very physical space between the sound track and that of the images. If a viewer does not have access to the image [parce qu’il est aveugle], he is missing something so that he can completely take his place in the room. This is where the words of the audio description come in”, she said. And added: ” The central question is: what is there in the image, which the sound track alone does not allow us to perceive, and which it is essential to perceive in order to grasp the cinema project of the author? »
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