The Intuition of the Body, Time and the Sixth Sense; from Chantal Akerman to Contemporary Women Directors. Muriel Andrin

Whenever Chantal Akerman’s films are mentioned, the question of time rapidly comes up. Raising questions amongst everyone, she imposes her presence in short and medium length films (Saute ma ville, L’enfant aimé ou je joue à être une femme mariée, La chambre, Le 15/08), shot between 1968 and 1972. Far from being isolated, she fits into a whole, a film representation that is closely linked to both language and the body, but to the desire to destroy, at the same time, female stereotypes and the traditional performance rules of the cinema. Curiously, this “all for the art of film” did not depend on the film-maker’s own state of mind or on those years when she was working, and has been passed down to contemporary women directors: Marion Hansel, Jane Campion, Claire Denis, Marina De Van, Lucie Hadzihalilovic, Julie Taymor, Isabel Coixet, Mira Nair or even Naomi Kawase who, thus, have revisited this film configuration of the world of characters and of the utterance of narrative. Yet beyond this, these directors have introduced these reflections in the field of classical narrative or even commercial films, setting them apart from their original experimental value.