Saute ma ville
Blow Up My Town
Chantal Akerman
»You see an adolescent girl, 18 years old, going into a kitchen and doing ordinary things, but in a completely crazy way. Eventually she commits suicide. The opposite of Jeanne Dielman: Jeanne – that was resignation. Here it is rage and death.«
– Chantal Akerman
Chantal Akerman left her first film in a laboratory for two years because she couldn‘t afford to pay for it and was unsure about its quality. When the laboratory manager told her to collect the film, she asked him to watch it. He not only liked Blow Up My Town, which is considered a classic film today, he also put Akerman in contact with Belgian television.
Chantal Akerman
Born 1950 in Brussels as the daughter of Polish-Jewish immigrants. At the age of seventeen, she made her first short film Blow Up My Town and dropped out of INSAS film school – as with her drama studies somewhat later. In 1972, she went to New York for two years where experimental film-makers such as Michael Snow and Jonas Mekas were to influence her work. The breakthrough came in 1975 with her second feature film Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quai, 1080 Brussels. Her total oeuvre amounts to over forty films. In 2004, the Centre Pompidou honoured Akerman with a retrospective of her films spanning five decades. She lived in Paris, Brussels and New York until her death in 2015.
Films by Chantal Akerman (Selection)
Demain on déménage (Morgen zieh‘n wir um) 2003 | De l‘autre côté (Jenseits von Sonora-Mexiko) 2002 | Un divan à New York (Couch in New York) 1995 | D‘Est (Aus dem Osten) 1993 | Nuit et Jour (Die Nacht, der Tag) 1991 | Histoires d‘Amérique (American Stories) 1988 | Golden Eighties 1986 | J’ai faim, j’ai froid (I ́m Hungry, I ́m Cold) 1984 | Un jour Pina m‘a demandé (Eines Tages fragte mich Pina) 1982 | Je, tu, il, elle (Ich, du, er, sie) 1974
