Chantal Akerman

From here: “Geboren am 6. Juni 1950 in Brüssel. Besuch eines Lyceums in Brüssel. Mit 15 Jahren sieht sie den Film “Pierrot le Fou” von Jean-Luc Godard und wird angeregt, selbst Filme zu drehen. Für vier Monate besucht sie die Film-Hochschule in Brüssel (INSAS). Nach eigenen Aussagen hat sie dort keine Anregungen erhalten. 1971 längerer New-York Aufenthalt und Beschäftigung mit den Filmen von Stan Brakhage, Michael Snow und Jonas Mekas. Seit 1968 dreht sie Filme.” Below a picture of her taken from her filmed autobiography.

Dear Umberta,

I told you a bit some weeks ago about a film inspired by “La Prisonnière” of Marcel Proust. It is La Captive (die Gefangene, 1999) by Chantal Akerman, jewish and homosexual like Proust. Very very beautiful film about jealousy inter alia. Any film of Chantal Akerman is interesting, but I particularly liked “Demain on déménage” (morgen ziehen wir um) — she’s a bit obsessed with migration — and “Jeanne Dielman” (1975) an incredible experimental film about an efficient homemaker and also a discreet one-client-per-day fille de joie marvelously performed by one of most beautiful voices of French cinema, Delphine Seyrig. One can see her peeling the potatoes here. She also published a not very well known small autobiographical novel, “Une famille à Bruxelles”, Edition L’Arche, 1998, of course not translated in german. The picture below is taken from La Captive.

Professor Bad Trip by Fausto Romitelli

I went to this concert I was talking about of Ictus ensemble last Friday (Professor Bad Trip of Fausto Romitelli) and I can only recommend to anybody reading these lines to listen to this piece. It is simply one of the most beautiful pieces of contemporary music. It is very strong, never boring or pretentious as contemporary music can sometimes be, filled with a “dry sadness”, a sadness which is never pathetic, and often nasty (esp. the cello solo, very beautifully played by François Deppe). Jean-Luc Plouvier (one of the pianists of Ictus) told me that it is certainly the best album of them (and only 12 euros on the site of the excellent Cypres Records). They worked on it for months and together with Romitelli. It is the last album by Ictus that Romitelli could hear before his death (and from what I was told, he was extremely happy with the result). During the concert, I thought that if progressive contemporary music exists, then Professor Bad Trip pertains to this genre. It is a bit like the first Pink Floyd album of classical music. The presence of the electric guitar (sometimes played with distortions) certainly explains it partly. And in fact, this impression was justified, since Plouvier explained me after the concert that Romitelli called this piece after a famous hippie comics from the seventies in Italy (see the drawing above) by
Gianluca Lerici, whose best known comics is an adaptation of William Burroughs’ ‘Naked Lunch’ (‘Il Pasto Nudo’). Professor Bad Trip was also inspired by the poetry of the Belgian writer and painter Henri Michaux and esp. his works on mescaline and other psychedelic substances. And it’s true that the drawing of Michaux above resembles a bit Professor Bad Trip. The drawing below is by him.

Odilon-Jean Périer

Odilon-Jean Périer is one of the most subtil Belgian poets. He died in 1928 at the age of 27. He was friend with Rilke who dedicated him some poems like this one. He had an “amour pieux” for Bruxelles where he lived. Le Promeneur, one of his most beautiful collection, does not seem to be translated in German.