Semiotics of the Kitchen
Made the same year as Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman…, American conceptual artist Martha Rosler (b. 1943) confronts her viewer with a stone-faced, aproned woman in her kitchen. As this unhappy housewife displays and handles her cooking tools alphabetically, their meanings are recontextualized as objects not of domestic labor, but as weapons of female rage.
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
Recently named the greatest film of all time by the decennial Sight and Sound poll, Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman’s (1950–2015) uncompromising second feature film, made when she was only 25, masterfully illustrates the quiet rage beget by female oppression through the stoic face of actress Delphine Seyrig. Lensed by Babette Mangolte, one of the most prolific women cinematographers of her era, this domestic epic unfolds over three seemingly ordinary days in the life of a housewife, mother, and part-time sex worker in Brussels. The tension created through repetition and the smallest of gestures makes this an unequivocal masterpiece and a timeless example of feminist filmmaking.
Semiotics of the Kitchen
DIRECTED BY: Martha Rosler. 1975. 6 min. USA. B&W. Digital.
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
DIRECTED/WRITTEN BY: Chantal Akerman. WITH: Delphine Seyrig, Jan Decorte. 1975. 201 min. Belgium/France. Color. French. 35mm.
