In this paper, I refer to 5 films by Marguerite Duras, all written and filmed by Duras in 1979. In the course of this highly productive year, she filmed four short films – Cesarée (colour, 11 minutes), Les Mains négatives (colour, 18 minutes), Aurélia Steiner, Melbourne (colour, 35 minutes), and Aurélia Steiner, Vancouver (black and white, 48 minutes) – and one feature-length film, Le Navire Night (colour, 94 minutes). The two shorts Cesarée and Les Mains Négatives were made from footage taken for Le Navire Night but never used. These are all films of separation. The narrative in each case, however slight, tells a fragmented story of bodies separated from each other – lover from lover, child from parent, a pre-historic human from the rest of humanity. Over the course of this year, Duras perfected her signature filmic techniques: dislocation of body and voice, image and sound, narrative and representation. The result is cinema that resists the power of the image, and strengthens the specator’s auditory powers.