Chantal Akerman, Feminist Cinema Pioneer, Dies at 65

In 1975, when she was just 25, she released Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, the groundbreaking film for which she is still best known. “Daring, original, uncompromising, and in all ways radical, Akerman revolutionized the history of cinema not only with her masterpiece ‘Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles’ but also with the sustained urgency of her brilliance”. It is in these films that her style begins to emerge more fully formed, with long takes and the repetition of seemingly ordinary tasks.

Throughout her more than 40 films, Akerman often explored themes of angst, isolation, and violence, often seen through the lens of the inner lives of women.

Her death has been confirmed by her sister, Sylviane Akerman, as well as Nicola Mazzanti, the director of the Royal Belgian Film Archive, with whom Akerman had worked closely.

In September, the filmmaker debuted a video essay titled No Home Movie, which featured interviews with her late mother. She also moved into documentary filmmaking, including D’Est (1993), which looked at Eastern Europe after the fall of communism, and La-bas (2006), in which she visits Israel for the first time as the child of a Holocaust survivor.

Chantal Akerman was hailed as a pioneer of feminist cinema.

Her most recent film, “No Home Movie“, which is being screened at the New York Film Festival, shows conversations between Akerman and her ill mother, a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

In a 2004 consideration of Akerman’s work for a Los Angeles retrospective, Times critic Manohla Dargis noted “the standard line on “Jeanne Dielman”… is that it’s a feminist classic, a designation that’s both perfectly true and reductive”. Non-linear narratives are a hallmark of her work. Akerman later described Hollywood as “Mecca, but not in the real meaning of the term – it’s Mecca where you go to flay yourself alive”.

Chantal Akerman has died unexpectedly at the age of 65.

A visiting lecturer for City College of New York, Akerman was scheduled for retrospectives and tributes later this year in London and elsewhere. Her 2007 video short Women From Antwerp in November is a case in point: a moody 20-minute montage of women smoking. European art cinema has lost one of its leading lights.