D’est: Everyday Ruptures and a Cinematic Flow of Time
Experimental filmmaker Chantal Akerman managed to capture a society undergoing rapid change in her feature documentary: D’est (1993). Moving across countries in the former East bloc shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, D’est shows the many fates and faces dealing with change in a moment of historical rupture. Almost thirty years later, with the pandemic accelerating ongoing political and economical transformations, maybe even challenging the current systems of governance as we know them, it is compelling to examine this particular work. D’est portrays certain societies on the brink of transitioning into western capitalism in the early nineties. The film shows people who have the lived experience of colliding, later collapsing ideologies.
In this essay I want to examine how Akerman’s stringent filmmaking style informs the tensions and clashing nature of a society facing the consequences of the end of the bipolar cold war. How do colliding temporalities, spatialities and experiences provide us glimpses of these societies, as the subjects of the film? How are formal elements and plastic contrasts useful in identifying the societal convulsions, delineating the lives of the people of post-communist societies?
1993
D’est was released in 1993, approximately four years after the fall of the Berlin wall. Akerman got the idea for the film while travelling in Eastern Europe soon after the fall of the Soviet Union, researching another film she wanted to make about the poet Anna Akhmatova. All the scenes are filmed, almost as a travel journal, from Poland, East Germany and Russia in 1992 and early 1993.
Akerman herself revealed an awareness of D’est being more than just a recording of a territory: “Our imaginary is charged with Eastern Europe. At each face I felt a history.. the camps, Stalin, denunciation.” And continues to say that “The film will let one perceive something of this disoriented world, with that which each lived day seems like a victory.”[1]
D’est is an essayistic documentary, shot with 16mm, showing a journey through Poland, East Germany, and Russia, moving back and forth between rural and urban landscapes, with only natural sound and light. It is a combination of discontinuity and repetition, where the scenes move through seasonal times, summer to winter. They shift between day and night and transport us from outdoors to indoors. Gliding from public to private, through various intimate interior spaces and suddenly back outside again.
We see masses of people waiting at train stations and bus stops, we see an old couple playing cards through a window, get a glimpse of people enjoying a concert and a woman drinking tea in her kitchen. People are either presented as a crowd or as their own entities in their homes. In full awareness of the extraordinary circumstances of the time and place we are presented, we get a glance at the daily routines of the people, both in common spaces and private rooms. In this way Akerman shows variations of the lives of the individuals who share a common past.
Ruptures, Structure
D’est is a peripatetic travel through Eastern Europe, where images of present-day reveal memories from a past. Walter Benjamin proposed a historical time as an alternative to a conception of time based on the linear, causal continuity of past, present and future. He argues that historical time is constituted through modes of memory, expectation and action and in his construction of time, he presents a relationship between the “then” and the “now,” as brought together in images of the past. Each historically specific “now” renders a particular “then”.[2] An image is that where the “then”, comes together in a flash with the “now” to form a constellation.[3]
The images of D’est could be seen as such constellations. Like Benjamin proposes, time is presented as flashes and ruptures. Each landscape, face and action shown, unveils an imprint from the past. Every scene in the film is exactly one shot of varying durations and the film has a strict serial structure: all the shots are placed one after one as blocks of image and sound. There is an unquestionable discontinuity between the shots, as a cut is a total break with mise-en-scene. The very historical moment which serves as the subject of the film could also be considered a “flash,” a rupture. Akerman famously declared that she had to make this film “while there is still time.”[4] On the brink of western invasion, this is a world awaiting a future where the readability on the faces, the reflections of “then,” will no longer be available. Akerman herself wrote about D’est that what film she was about to make was revealed to her “sometimes in a flash of self-evidence.”[5] The film is constructed based on her impressions on the journey. Rather than forcing a narration, she privileges randomness and lets the images speak for themselves and inform the past they bear.
This might give the film a disoriented feel, and Akerman herself described the subject of the film as a “disoriented world.” Yet Ivone Margulies finds a sense of continuity and counterbalance in the disjunctions in all of Akerman’s films.[6] In an interview, Claire Atherton, the editor of the D’est, described the editing process as composing rather than cutting,[7] which we experience through the smoothness that characterizes the film. The editing serves as masterful contrast to the strict “block” progression of the scenes.
Inspired by the structural movement, and filmmakers such as Andy Warhol and Michael Snow,[8] D’est touches upon indicative characteristics of structural film such as flicker and re-photography. [9] In the wintery landscapes of Moscow, it revisits the same streets in different settings: when it is packed with people waiting for transport in the late afternoon, and again when it is completely empty at night. Car-lights flicker in the darkness in the lengthy shots of city nights, and the pitch-black sky is contrasted with bright lights from buildings and streetlights.
Margulies points out that Akerman made a shift towards a serial structure in her films from the 80s onwards. As mentioned, the film moves in blocks and this block configuration follows the catalogue principal of structural film, which is described as a systematic approach to any given reality, providing a structure so that every event can be seen as an element of a whole.[10] Margulies discusses Akerman’s fiction films in this manner, but D’est is also constructed with a serial structure. By the use of repeated patterns, a serial structure has the ability to reflect on the reality as totality. In the case of D’est, every shot becomes an example of the overall filmic event. This method exposes the underlying contrasts and tensions of the societies depicted, simultaneously presenting totality. In a search for individuality in every face and locality [11], D’est structures commonness.
Waiting
D’est is filled with colluding, contrasting images of various events. Yet, looking back, the shots of people waiting in lines at bus stops are the most memorable and characteristic ones for the film. At first glance, it seems like a wall of people is appearing out of nowhere in the frame. People are standing together without a clear purpose, as if asked by the filmmaker, or simply obeying the camera. Only when you start to notice the surprised, even annoyed faces of the people, is it clear that there is a different purpose to the constellation of the heavy-clothed, stationed bodies: they are waiting for something. Clearly Akerman seeks to show the act of waiting itself. Even in a roughly eight-minute-long take, everything else is regarded extensive except for the very formation of the people and their faces that fill up the frame.
In his Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre argues that the queue shows the relationship between an individual and the organization of society.[12] An arrangement of waiting at the bus stop demands cooperation and mutual respect, at the same time there is no direct communication among the individuals. Jonathan Crary points out that this is “one of many banal instances in which the conflict between the individual and the organization of society is felt, but at the level of the unthought or unseen.”[13] What Sartre identifies as the plurality of isolations seems to be manifested in the film with the oscillation between the individual’s place in a collective construct, like a ration line or at a bus stop and individuals occupied with daily routines in sheltered, domestic spaces. The sum of the everyday isolated activities of cutting meat, watching television, drinking tea constitute the society we are exposed to. I wood argue that D’est can be seen as an attempt to establish a structure in the oscillating nature of the world we are seeing.
Distribution of Contact
D’est mostly glides along the surfaces of the territories it covers. There is a particular distance upheld throughout the film, which is neither up close nor from too far away. The tracking shots are somewhere in-between, where it feels like the camera is scanning, without knowing what it is looking for. The detailed recording of the features of the faces, is a consequence of a somewhat incidental search. Margulies describes this search as one of a “mix of interest and estrangement.”[14] We know nothing about the people, their occupations, beliefs or even their geographical location. We see groups of people walking in snowy landscapes, without getting to know where they are going. We only know what is provided by the images and the fact that they share a common past.
In the recurring shots of people waiting outdoors at bus stops in late autumn, or icy winter, we see this clearly. The camera is mounted on a ZiL[1], a car used by soviet bureaucrats, filming long, slow shots, capturing the people waiting. With similar fur hats and coats, seemingly as a homogenous mass, the lingering shots resolve their anonymity and expose identities. In the background we see movement, vehicles, tall buildings, and people walking. But while we get a glimpse of the busy life from the background, the people in the foreground are standing mostly still, utilizing the depth of field to display clashing temporalities. Sometimes the mass of people fills the entire frame with their various expressions and gazes, removing the noise of the background. This gives us room to study the faces, grappled by a sense of loss.
The relationship between the camera and the people is felt, shifting between mutual curiosity, indifference, and unease. Even if the responses are different, no one is privileged by the camera, which in a sense restores the commonness of the people. It is not obvious if the camera is seeking contact or avoiding it. Every time it reaches a face, near enough to make contact, it moves on, upholding its own temporality. Occasionally someone shows a keen interest in the camera, like a young boy seeking its attention and reappearing in the frame several times. Other times people reveal disapproval of the camera’s presence through their facial expression; some even verbalize it, cursing at it. In both situations, the camera seems to ignore the person. This constitutes a dialectical relationship, in the alternation between the camera seeking contact with people, and people seeking contact with the camera.
The presence of the camera is felt differently in the many fixed frame shots in the film. Akerman scales down and gives us moments of individuation.[2] All scenes from inside people’s homes use a fixed shot, mostly with a frontal camera position. For example, there are several scenes where a person poses for the camera as if posing for a photography. These shots appear sporadically but are connected by specific elements of mise-én-scene, like the consistent use of the colours green and red, the almost closed curtains, the unnatural behaviour of the subject and so on. For instance, we see a woman sitting in a green and red room, staring directly into the camera and holding a piece of paper in her hand. The woman is attempting to sit still, slightly shifting on the sofa. She displays a hint of uneasiness, which is contrasted with a calm breeze visible by the slight movement of the curtains, and a strong sunlight shining in through the window. The sense of loss in her face and posture, is combined with both invading sunlight and the invading camera. The contrasts in this image and the many iterations of it in the film is indicative of the loss of the people met with an invading alternative future.
Public and private
As we have seen in the shots from the public domain, there is a dialectical relationship between public and private, as the act of waiting showcases a plurality of isolations. Similarly, a clear pull between the private and public is represented in several of the indoor scenes.
Halfway through the film is a scene that lasts for around forty seconds, with a fixed, frontal camera. Like many of the indoor scenes in the film, it shows a small room filled with patterns in mostly red, green, and white curtain, carpets, tablecloths and clothes. The curtains are slightly open, revealing that its night outside, the interior space being reflected in the window. There is a lot of furniture cramped in the space, like a table covered with toys, and a television set in the corner. A woman is sitting on the very edge of a bed, while her two daughters are playing with toys spread across the sheets. The younger of the two is standing with her back turned to the camera, not noticing its presence. The mother on the other hand is very much aware of its presence, and is actively avoiding eye contact, shifting her position and gaze.
Suddenly there is music playing in the room, and the young girl reacts to it immediately, dancing to the rhythm while the mother maintains her indifference. Shortly after we hear the music, we see that the TV in the corner starts to flicker, revealing the source of the sound. Slowly a picture appears on the screen. The otherwise warm room now has the presence of a blue, cold light. The colour tones in the picture are similar to the colour in the outdoor shots from the film, already indicating a merging the inside and outside.
The sudden appearance of the sound and image on the TV, indicates that it must have been switched on by someone, revealing the filmmaker’s own presence in the room. On the TV screen we see a montage of different activities like a worker, wearing a helmet, probably at a building site, holding a hook attached to a crane, a woman typing on her typewriter, a musician playing the clarinet and a couple with a stroller. The images on the TV are from everyday life, almost as a nod to Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera, which presents everyday activities in a city during communism.
Lynn Spigel notes that the domestic everyday experiences are characteristic of post-war isolationism. The television therefore eradicates the notion of the public and private spheres as mutually exclusive territories, by bringing the outside world into the home. Spigel discusses the television in relation to the American suburbs, which seems to be applicable here.[15] Ellen Mickiewics writes in Split Signals: Television and Politics in the Soviet Union that when the TV arrived as a new medium for communication in the homes in the Soviet Union it created for the first time a mass public. This was a different kind of public that was more aware of the outside world. Adaption to the new information environment played a part in the dissolution of the union and other media didn’t have the wide reach which was achieved with the television.[16] This particular scene in the film is not the only one where there is a television present in the room, which no one is watching. As we see in other examples the people are seated in a way such that they are facing a completely different direction, than the television image. This designates a use of the television as a referential device, rather than a mere display of an everyday activity.
By presenting a socio-political context, such as in D’est, as a composition of various elements, formal traits and experiences, we are presented with an opportunity to see that many different shapes and patterns constitute social experience. Caroline Levine suggests that being able to detect differences in the society, is also a way of training perception to detect hierarchies, for example. She defines form as “all shapes and configurations, all ordering principles, all patterns of repetition and difference.”[17] She points that a society consists of many overlapping forms, often clashing and interrupting and rerouting one another.[18]
By examining some of the aesthetic forms of D’est, we are able to uncover some of the social ones. The film is constructed in a very specific manner, where a sense of formal estrangement, like unnatural postures or the fixed stare of the camera, encourages a specific look on subject of the film. By presenting small- and large-scale contrasts, D’est lets us conscientiously identify the dialectical tensions present in the post-communist society.
Notes
[1] Ivone Margulies, Nothing Happens, 199.
[2] Peter Osborne and Charles Matthew, "Walter Benjamin", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2020/entries/benjamin/
[3] Osborne and Matthew, “Walter Benjamin”.
[4] Crary, 24/7, 148.
[5] Lebow, Memory Once Removed, 41-42
[6] Margulies, Nothing Happens, 173.
[7] Atherton, About D’est.
[8] Margulies, Nothing Happens, 1-20.
[9] Sitney, Visionary Film, 347-370.
[10] Margulies, Nothing Happens, 172.
[11] I will expand on this later in the paper.
[12] Marxist Internet Archive, ”Jean-Paul Sartre Archive,” access date: 10 March, 2021. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/index.htm
[13] Crary, 24/7, 150.
[14] Lebow, Memory Once Removed, 75 (notes).
[15] Spigel, Lynn. "Installing the Television Set: Popular Discourse on Television and Domestic Space, 1948-1955", Camera Obscura Vol. 6 No: 1 (1988), 11-46.
[16] Ellen Mickiewicz. Split Signals: Television and Politics in the Soviet Union (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 3.
[17] Levine, Caroline. “Introduction: The Affordances of Form,” in Forms. Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), 3.
[18] Levine, “Introduction: The Affordances of Form,”18.