Our Way of Working: A Conversation with Claire Atherton about Chantal Akerman

This interview with film editor Claire Atherton focuses on her three-decade collaboration on the films and installations of Chantal Akerman (1950–2015). Questioned by Akerman scholar Ivone Margulies, Atherton describes her meeting and rapport with Akerman and their way of working together, from shooting the stage performance of Letters Home in 1986 to the process of combining images and sounds in Akerman’s final works, the film No Home Movie (France/Belgium) and the multichannel installation piece Now, both 2015. Works mentioned include D’Est (From the East, France/Belgium, 1993), Almayer’s Folly (La Folie Almayer, France/Belgium, 2011), and the installation Selfportrait/ Autobiography: A Work in Progress (1998); topics encompass analog video editing, viewer experiences of film versus installation work, and how Atherton’s interest in Taoism informs her understanding of movement, change, and openness in Akerman’s work.