Chantal Akerman: Beta Phase.

By: Jose Sarmiento Hinojosa

Skipping over the anecdote, then, what was it that made you want to be a filmmaker?

“Well, yes yes. It’s Godard, it’s Pierrot Le Fou. But it’s very simple. I was not interested by cinema when I was young. And it’s also related to Brussels. Most of the films were forbidden. You needed to be 16 to see any interesting things. So all I saw before that was big American shit like, I don’t know what: warfare, Les Canons De Navarone, The Ten Commandments. We were just going to the movies to kiss and eat ice cream and eventually look at the movie. But I didn’t care. I was much more interested in literature; I wanted to be a writer. Then I saw Godard’s film, Pierrot Le Fou, and I had the feeling it was art, and that you could express yourself. It was in 1965, and you felt that the times were changing. He was really representing that, and freedom and poetry and another type of love and everything. So as a little girl, I went out of that place, the cinema, and I said, “I want to make films. That’s it.”