The Fondation Chantal Akerman and Cinematek, the Royal Film Archive of Belgium, have made available a remarkable find: four early shorts by the Belgian-born filmmaker, produced in 1967 when she was only 17 years old, which are now being exhibited under the program title Chantal Akerman: Her First Look Behind the Camera. Silent, shot on 8mm, and each about four minutes long, these films were made by Akerman as part of her application to the filmmaking program at Brussels’ Institut Supérieur des Arts du Spectacle, or INSAS, where she was accepted but left after a few months, pronouncing the program stifling. What a strange gift to learn only now of these films, whose existence has been entirely unknown even within the large body of critical work on Akerman. Made a year prior to Akerman’s first distributed short film, Saute ma ville (1968), they predate by only eight short years the production of Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, Akerman’s much-heralded masterpiece and the film that would become, 48 years after its release, the undisputed world champion of all cinema—a fact no one would dare argue about, ever.
I also doubt (with a little more seriousness) that anyone would argue with the claim that this find calls up questions of
