Chantal Akerman: film portraiture as an interrogation of trauma

Abstract

Two of the most important studies on the genre of portraiture in painting (Galienne and Pierre Francastel, 1969) and film (Jacques Aumont, 1992) conclude that the twentieth century marked the decline of a genre that no longer finds a way to express itself; this would be due to a kind of disorientation or loss of interest on the part of artists and filmmakers, which would be evidence of a cultural context of loss of meaning of the face. This article proposes to reconsider these assertions in the light of the patient and complex work carried out over half a century by Chantal Akerman with regard to the figure of her mother, a Holocaust survivor; one of the most protean and ambitious portraits in the history of cinema, consisting of a dozen films, video installations and novels.