Blow Up My Town
A young woman, played by the filmmaker herself, enters the kitchen of her Brussels flat and begins a domestic routine that gradually degenerates. Parodying the mundane, she mops the floor, polishes her shoes, tapes up the door’s crevices, and gives an explosive twist to her domestic life.
Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman, who passed away in 2015, has gained worldwide fame. Nothing is quiet about her first short film, Blow Up My Town (1968). Her character is abrupt, energetic, and explosive. Something is teetering. This short film is a visionary prelude to the filmmaker’s oeuvre and life.
Blow Up My Town precedes Vera Chytilova’s equally anarchic-feminist Daisies.
