Portrait d'une jeune fille de la fin des années 60 à Bruxelles (E03)

The work of Chantal Akerman has been characterized since the formative 70s, sometimes more, sometimes less densely, by autobiographical elements in her individual films. This tendency culminated in her very last film, No Home Movie. Portrait d'une jeune fille de la fin des années 60 à Bruxelles is precisely one such film. Brussels, spring, a month before May 1968, first love, what is love? A young girl wearing pants, with questions and Sartre in the air (soon Godard will be there too), the search for oneself, feelings, the question of choice: a young boy or perhaps a young girl? The young girl walks through the train station hall, which appears in The Meetings of Anna. She watches the screen like Anna Karina in My Life to Live and plays a dialogue game with words and books like Karina with Jean-Claude Brialy in A Woman Is a Woman. "A Woman is a Woman" - really?, she asked throughout her life in her films. Godard, a great inspiration for the young girl who decided to make films at the end of the 60s. The young girl walks through golden 1960s Brussels and in her portrait, she is not afraid to capture cars from the late 80s because Cohen's and Brown's music can evoke memories on its own. Yet it doesn't only serve as a significant narrative tool for this time machine of a film because it is also the background against which the character of the young girl was formed: James Brown's "It's a Man's World" is playing at the moment when the girl's gaze seeks someone. Who? In I, You, He, She, the search leads to another girl. Even back then the young girl was caught in the ambiguity of who deserves our gaze more. Even back then the young girl understood the nature of men - long hair and submissive gestures ultimately always work and there is no need to see it with your own eyes. Neither the film nor the viewer has to. But as long as the desire to make films about that and everything else exists, the young girl can live within the adult woman. After almost half a century of directing work, the young girl Chantal Akerman died three days ago. (08.10.2015)