“Chantal Akerman. So, I first saw Jeanne Dielman when I was in film school, and I couldn’t believe how riveted I was by a three-hour movie that was just about the tiniest things, and it opened up the seed in my brain that the epically small could be what I do in film: take something that someone would normally make a five-minute short film about, but then make an 80-minute feature. It’s kind of at the cornerstone of what I do. And I think Chantal did that really well. In particular, those early movies, black and white, pointing the camera at herself, raw, expressive. In some ways it’s where I got those ideas to make Creep and The Creep Tapes, which is just, like, how slow-paced can you be and still keep an audience? But yes, Je Tu Il Elle is the early one that I really, really, really loved.”
