ABSTRACT
Initially influenced by structural aesthetics, Akerman continued to build her films around spatial issues – distance, light, emptiness and fullness, inside and outside. In doing so, she systematically re-examined the means of filmic representation (frame, movement, editing, and duration) to understand how to show space in cinema. The ambivalence toward domestic space seen in JEANNE DIELMAN would point in two directions: toward everyday life and to the opacity of the maternal world. In SAUTE MA VILLE it is associated with the asphyxiating daily routine of household chores, while in JE TU IL ELLE the filmmaker systematically exhausted its possibilities. The film No HOME MOVIE was produced from material recorded on a daily basis in her mother’s apartment. Her installations MANIAC SHADOWS and JE TU IL ELLE, L’INSTALLATION allowed visitors to interact with screens that enhanced a sense of displacement as well as encounter and liminality.
