Memory Narration

Memory Fragmentation Instead of narrating the murder of a black man, Chantal Akerman uses a unique camera language of dynamic shot and still shot in South to support its interwoven narrative between interview and natural landscape to recall the heavy memories in the past and think it in present. A repetition structure displays the natural and architectural landscape of the South. Akerman is good at using an observed mode to show the audience the memory of a place. At the beginning of the film, an opening shot is a long take that using tracking movement leads the audience to a row of ancient wood trees. These trees are neat and in order like an army. The repetition of the landscape depicts the residential houses arranged

It is interesting that the landscape is apart from the interviews to indicate the event, but the landscape scenes render a sympathetic emotion for the interviews. Therefore, the landscape and interview shot are equally important in the film. Unlike the shock of the displaying of landscape, the interview shots are calmer than the landscape view. Akerman shot from the point of view of three interviewees to let the audience know the murder happened in the South. The interviewees are the Black and the White. Through the silence into sound, these three interviewees seem to represent their ethnicity to speak out their thoughts on the murder. Also, they are speaking from different social status, like a resident in the town, a police officer, a commentator. Akerman creates a dynamic point of view to narrate the murder event from those different people who living in the community. From their fragment memories, the film restores the detail of how a black man was beaten by three white man to death. The cruelty happened in the past contrasts with their calm narrative interviews years later. Their interviews are like a remodeling of the history. Through reconstruction of history, Akerman recall the trauma of the South, and from the incident among the murder to out of the slavery