Abstract/Summary

This chapter demonstrates substantive mastery of the works of filmmaker Chantal Akerman, contributing to an important volume of reflections on Akerman’s late work (from the 1980s onward). Akerman, who died in 2015, was a germinal figure in experimental cinema of the 1970s, and her work remains a key reference point for feminist and formalist experimental filmmaking even today. The theoretical frameworks are entirely new, examining the relationships of ageing and self-representation through Akerman’s oeuvre, and particularly focussing on the figure of the daughter in Saute ma ville (1968), Les Rendez-vous d’Anna (1978), Aujourd’hui, dis-moi (1980), Demain on déménage (2004), La Folie Almayer (2011), and No Home Movie (2015). The chapter deftly makes use of Simone de Beauvoir’s volume on ageing, La Veillesse (1970), to reflect on the temporal stasis induced in the series of daughters depicted in Akerman’s work. The chapter extends these reflections to consider how these ageless avatars are sites of resistance, not only of the passage of time, but also sites of political resistance, and intergenerational joy.