PRESS
100th anniversary UCPB-UBFP: Les Rendez-vous d'Anna
(Chantal Akerman, 1978)
In March, the members decided to highlight Les Rendez-vous d’Anna by Chantal Akerman.
20.03 2025
100th anniversary UCPB-UBFP: Les Rendez-vous d'Anna (Chantal Akerman, 1978)
The UBFP-UPCB is a national association representing FIPRESCI in Belgium, bringing together professional critics and journalists who promote cinema while defending the rights and interests of its members.
On the occasion of the UPCB’s centenary in 2025, CINEMATEK joins the celebration by inviting members of the Union to present, throughout the year, on the third Thursday of each month, a selection of 12 films awarded by UPCB journalists since the association’s inception. In March, the members decided to highlight Les Rendez-vous d’Anna by Chantal Akerman.
Juliette Goudot, journalist for Moustique, Gaël, and La Première, presents the film:
« Un monde éclaté. Un appartement où l’on ne fait que passer. Anna est cinéaste. On ne saura jamais très bien pourquoi ni comment. On ne verra d’ailleurs rien, tout au long du film de son activité qui relève plus immédiatement du cinéma, ni tournage ni acteurs, ni producteurs etc. On ne saura jamais très bien pourquoi elle est cinéaste, si ce n’est que ça lui permet et l’oblige à dériver, à errer, à être nomade. On la verra voyager de ville en ville, comme un commis voyageur pour présenter son film. On ne verra pas la présentation mais seulement les lumières d’un cinéma qui s’éteignent devant ou derrière elle, puis des gares, des trains, des quais, des chambres d’hôtel, des bouts de ville. (…) Les Rendez-vous d’Anna. On a tourné l’hiver. Avec Aurore. Encore une actrice que j’aime. »
This excerpt is taken from Chantal Akerman, autoportrait en cinéaste, the beautiful publication that accompanied the "Chantal Akerman event" at the Centre Pompidou in 2004. This was three years after Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles, the film that brought Chantal international recognition and was named the "greatest film of all time" by the Sight & Sound poll of the British Film Institute in 2022, a title it will hold for the next ten years. Jeanne Dielman marked the meeting between Akerman and Delphine Seyrig, while Les Rendez-vous d’Anna introduced Aurore Clément, the beginning of a five-film collaboration.
Les Rendez-vous d’Anna is, of course, a film about wandering, but also about Europe, about the memory of the Shoah, and, I would like to add, about the love of men. Upon its release, Chantal was often criticized for not loving men or for mocking them, particularly because of the scene with Jean-Pierre Cassel, who fails to sleep with Anna, and an earlier scene with Heinrich, a German schoolteacher, whom Anna rejects. She tells him something simple: "We don’t love each other." It is precisely for this reason, I believe, that Les Rendez-vous d’Anna is a profound meditation on love. It is also a reflection on the strangeness of a woman without children, her solitude, and yet her desire not to have any, even as everyone around her comments on it. At the same time, she is a woman who, in the loneliness of her walks through train stations, hotels, and the trains she takes between Germany and Belgium, is able to summon, all on her own, the ghosts that haunt us.
The screening will be presented in French by Juliette Goudot, in the presence of Marilyn Watelet, Chantal Akerman's collaborator, assistant director on Les Rendez-vous d'Anna then producer for the filmmaker.
The film will be shown in DCP, in its restored version by CINEMATEK in 2023.