Vents Violents (two letters to Chantal Akerman)
2024, video and 16mm transferred to video, 20’25’’, color, stereo, Yiddish and French with English subtitles
Vents Violents is a dialogue with the absence of Belgian Jewish filmmaker Chantal Akerman.
The film follows her footsteps along route 3199 in Al-Naqab desert in southern Israel/colonized Palestine, where she filmed scenes that were used in her last film No Home Movie (2015).
Between two letters, in French and in Yiddish, Vents Violents travels through Akerman’s route while turning the camera towards evidence of colonial practices carried out in this desert on a daily basis, yet hidden from Akerman’s camera.
In its second part, the film reaches a dead end. The attempt to mourn Akerman in time of a ravaging genocide in Gaza – committed by Israel as the world turns a bling eye – is tormenting.
The film asks to destabilize the sense of reading localities via images, constantly shifting between video and 16mm film, as it moves from Al Naqab desert to Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
The film is a reckoning with the blind spot of European Jewry towards the settler colonization of Palestine by Zionism and the ongoing Palestinian Nakba.
Sound creation and mix Laszlo Umbreit
Color grading Miléna Trivier
Additional color grading and mix Sirah Foighel Brutmann and Eitan Efrat
Produced by Messidor
Supported by Vlaamse Gemeenschap Kunstendecreet
This film is a single screen version of the film Un Âne and [anan] that were part of Là
Supported by Kunstendecreet, S.M.A.K and Messidor