Identity and Memory The Films of Chantal Akerman Edited by Gwendolyn Audrey Foster   April 2003 ISBN 0-8093-2513-6, $26.50 paper ISBN 0-8093-2512-8, $45.00 cloth 224 pages, 5 3/8 x 8 7/16 Film Studies / Women's Studies    “The project of estimating the relentlessness with which Akerman’s work is marginalized, yet also building the strongest fortifications against marginalizing it, is very handily realized in Gwendolyn Audrey Foster’s signally erudite and championing collection, Identity and Memory: The Films of Chantal Akerman.” —Film Quarterly   Considered to be one of the most influential auteurs in French cinema today, Chantal Akerman has had a profound impact on both feminist filmmaking discourse and avant-garde film. She has shown herself to be an uncompromising and dedicated practitioner of the cinematic arts in works such as I…You…He…She (Je tu il elle,1974); Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975); Meetings with Anna (Les Rendez-vous d’Anna,1978); American Stories/Food, Family, and Philosophy (Histoires d’Amérique,1989); and From the East (D’Est,1993). Akerman has continued to create new and unexpected films that explore ideas about image, gaze, space, performance, and narration.              This collection of essays edited by Gwendolyn Audrey Foster assesses Akerman’s wide-ranging oeuvre, particularly her exploration of identity and memory, and considers her development as an artist and as a social force. Along with a detailed filmography and bibliography, both compiled by Foster, ten of the key figures in contemporary feminist moving-image discourse explore the themes with which Akerman is preoccupied: sexuality and lesbian identity, subjectivity, alterity, quotidian reality, the mother-daughter relationship, and Jewish diasporic identity.   The contributors include Maureen Turim, Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, Jennifer M. Barker, Ivone Margulies, Catherine Fowler, Janet Bergstrom, Ginette Vincendeau, Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Judith Mayne, and Kristine Butler.   Originally published in the United Kingdom by Flicks Books, this marks the first United States edition of Identity and Memory: The Films of Chantal Akerman.   Gwendolyn Audrey Foster is an associate professor of English at the University of Nebraska and editor of the Quarterly Review of Film and Video. She is the author of  Women Filmmakers of the African and Asian Diaspora: Decolonizing the Gaze, Locating Subjectivity; Troping the Body: Gender, Etiquette, and Performance; and Captive Bodies: Postcolonialist Subjectivity in the American Cinema.

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