Chantal Akerman, Belgian pioneer of feminist filmmaking, dies at 65

As Chantal was still mourning her mother’s death, and emotionally drained from production of the film, she took the criticism particularly hard. It was a very moving film, articulating much of what is often left unsaid between a parent and child about a awful trauma.

Friends of hers had told the New York Times that they were anxious for Akerman after the negative response to the film, as she had “previously suffered breakdowns” and was “devastated” by the reception. “Akerman created new formal languages and consistently expanded cinema’s reach with her restless curiosity and willingness to wade into taboo subjects”.

The groundbreaking feminist/avant-garde filmmaker began making movies in 1968, inspired by Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, and a viewing (at age 15) of Godard’s Pierrot le fou. But in myriad, sometimes abstract forms, her films were hailed for their bracing feminism and haunting intimacy. It was, however, the almost 3 ½ hour Jeanne Dielman-a mesmerizing portrait of a Belgian woman, played by Delphine Seyrig, as she goes through her daily routines-that established her on the worldwide film scene. “And then there are a few filmmakers who change film history”. J. Hoberman, a former film critic for The Village Voice, likened her to Mr. Godard and to the German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, calling her “arguably the most important European director of her generation”. The movie, which is a video essay about her mother, Natalia, an Auschwitz survivor who died a year ago, is set to screen at the New York Film Festival this week.

Akerman was known for her slow-paced experimental films, largely focused on the everyday life of women. Her mother died in 2014. That, however, doesn’t really encompass the scope of the filmmaker’s work, which ranged from documentaries to fiction features with stars and from adaptations of Joseph Conrad (Alamayer’s Folly) and Marcel Proust (The Captive) to a pastel-toned musical set in a shopping mall (Golden Eighties).

While her work was often inward-looking, she also made several travelogues, including From the East, filmed across the south in the United States. While the cause and precise date of her death is unknown, her passing is certainly unexpected.

She had been due to give a series of talks in London next month (Nov15) to mark a retrospective of her work at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) cinema.