ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses life history of Chantal Akerman, a feminist thinker. Born in Brussels, Belgium, to Holocaust survivors from Poland, Chantal Akerman dropped out of film school in the first term to create Saute ma ville, a thirteen-minute film that centers on a young girl in her apartment. Film auteur Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles premiered in 1975. The year of the film's release was, coincidentally, the same year that Silvia Federici published her influential essay, "Wages Against Housework". In this essay, Federici argued that "not only is wages for housework a revolutionary perspective, but it is the only revolutionary perspective from a feminist viewpoint". By portraying the details and work patterns of her day as affirming or at least maintaining Jeanne's identity, Akerman's formal choices and narrative frame refuse the simple reading of her heroine's life that would show housework only as drudgery and the female protagonist as victim.
