New, Updated Edition Southern Illinois University Press, 2003.
Identity and Memory: The Films of Chantal Akerman
Edited by Gwendolyn Audrey Foster
The films of Chantal Akerman have had a profound impact on both feminist filmmaking discourse and avant-garde cinema. In works such as JU TU IL ELLE (1974), JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 QUAI DE COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES (1975), LES RENDEZ-VOUS D'ANNA (1978), HISTOIRES D'AMERIQUE (1989) and D'EST (1993), Akerman has continued to create new and unexpected films which explore ideas about the image, the gaze, space, performance and narration, and shown herself to be an uncompromising and dedicated practitioner of the cinema.
This superb collection of essays, featuring new critical essays from such influential theorists as Maureen Turim, Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, Ivone Margulies, Catherine Fowler, Janet Bergstrom, Ginette Vincendeau, Jennifer Barker, Judith Mayne and Kristine Butler, assesses Akerman's wide-ranging oeuvre, and considers her development as an artist and a social force. The contributors, who are some of the key figures in contemporary feminist moving image discourse, explore the themes with which Akerman is preoccupied: sexuality and lesbian identity, subjectivity, alterity, quotidian reality, the mother-daughter relationship and Jewish diasporic identity, amongst others. Akerman continually pushes back the representational and narrative boundaries of the film medium, urging us to contemplate the possibilities of the manufactured moving image, silence or dialogue, a static camera or one that joyously participates in the action.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
PERSONAL PRONOUNCEMENTS IN I,YOU,HE,SHE and PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG GIRL AT THE END OF THE 1960s IN BRUSSELS
Maureen Turim
WHAT'S BENEATH HER SMILE? SUBJECTIVITY AND DESIRE IN GERMAINE DULAC'S THE SMILING MADAME BEUDET and CHANTAL AKERMAN'S JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 QUAI DE COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES
Sandy Flitterman-Lewis
THE FEMININE SIDE OF NEW YORK: TRAVELOGUE, AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND ARCHITECTURE IN NEWS FROM HOME
Jennifer M. Barker
ECHO AND VOICE IN MEETINGS WITH ANNA
Ivone Margulies
ALL NIGHT LONG: THE AMBIVALENT TEXT OF "BELGIANICITY"
Catherine Fowler
INVENTED MEMORIES
Janet Bergstrom
NIGHT AND DAY: A PARISIAN FAIRY TALE
Ginette Vincendeau
THE MECHANICS OF THE PERFORMATIVE BODY IN THE EIGHTIES
Gwendolyn Audrey Foster
GIRL TALK: PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG GIRL AT THE END OF THE 1960s IN BRUSSELS
Judith Mayne
BORDERING ON FICTION: CHANTAL AKERMAN'S FROM THE EAST
Kristine Butler
With a complete filmography, bibliography, and an introduction by
Gwendolyn Audrey Foster.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gwendolyn Audrey Foster holds the rank of Professor in the Department of English, at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, where she is also the Coordinator of the Film Studies Program.
She is the author of several books, including a study of post-colonial women filmmakers, entitled WOMEN FILMMAKERS OF THE AFRICAN AND ASIAN DIASPORA (Southern Illinois University Press, 1999), and CAPTIVE BODIES: POSTCOLONIALIST SUBJECTIVITY IN THE AMERICAN CINEMA (State University of New York Press, 1999).