12. Rewriting Proust

Abstract

On October 5, 2015, the widely renowned Belgian f ilmmaker, Chantal Akerman, took her own life. Her untimely death prompted an outpouring of sadness about the loss of an extraordinary f ilmmaker, who has been celebrated ever since her masterpiece Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles made her famous in 1975 at the age of 25. The Belgian f ilmmaker, writer, and f ilm scholar, Eric de Kuyper, who, like Akerman, had been living and working in Brussels at the time, met her for the f irst time in his capacity as f ilm critic. As he recalled shortly after her death, that was in 1968: Akerman brought him her f irst f ilm, Saute ma ville / Blow Up My Town (1968) after having been sent to see him by the f ilmmaker, André Delvaux “for good reasons. At the time I had a f ilm program on Flemish Television (BRT), De andere film / The Other Movie. I showed experimental f ilms, underground movies, and other bizarre things. I was impressed by the direct spontaneity of the f ilm as well as by the maker. So of course I showed the f ilm [on Flemish Television]” (De Kuyper and Van den Oever 2015). At the time, Akerman struck him as being a very young girl, thinking that she was only 16 years old, although she was actually 18. They not only became friends and remained so for most of her life, but they also worked closely together on several projects, including La captive (2000). De Kuyper made several f ilms himself, including Naughty Boys (1984) and, more recently, My Life as an Actor (2015). This dialogue reass esses within the personal context of their friendship, the writing projects they worked on together. Proust played an important role in their joint reading and writing, and this dialogue deals mainly with their joint work on Proust for La captive.