Saute ma ville (Drama)

Rating:

Director: Chantal Akerman
Producer: Chantal Akerman
Cinematographer: René Fruchter
Editor: Geneviève Luciani
Key Cast: Chantal Akerman

Akerman’s comedic and incendiary first completed short film – whose title loosely translates as “blow up my town” – explodes feminine conventions.

Having left the film school INSAS after just three months, Chantal Akerman wrote, directed and starred in Saute ma ville when she was 18 years old. Shooting on 16mm, she portrays a young woman who returns to a small flat seemingly to clean and make dinner but whose actions become increasingly manic, profoundly disrupting the domestic scene. Made with materials from the school, Akerman’s 1968 short languished in the film laboratory for two years until she was able to pay for its release with a screening fee from the Flemish TV channel VRT (then curated by Eric de Kuyper, who many years later co-wrote the director’s La Captive and Demain on déménage).

2K Restoration. Restored in 2014 by Cinémathèque royale de Belgique (CINEMATEK).

This short film screens with Je tu ill elle, Chantal Akerman: Her First Look Behind the Camera.