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Movies & TV

In memoriam: Chantal Akerman, 1950-2015

Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman, the uncompromising and always intellectually challenging cinematic game changer, has died suddenly.

Her unique oeuvre of more than 40 films – the Festival of Festivals and TIFF screened 28 between them – explored everything commercial cinema would not. Akerman had an interest in everyday life, large hunks of her films unfolded in real time with zero jolts per second (per hour, actually), and her work consistently challenged the dominance of the male gaze.

The daughter of Holocaust survivors, she didn’t decide to become a filmmaker until she was 15 and saw Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le Fou. But though she was inspired by the likes of Godard and Andy Warhol, her work was wholly original.

At just 24, she astounded the film world with her feature Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai Du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, which unfolds in real time as a woman goes about her daily activities over a three-hour period. No one had ever dared to tell stories in this way and, certainly, no one had shown such an interest in a woman’s internal life.

Her minimalism had maximal effect, influencing directors like Todd Haynes, Sally Potter and Michael Haneke.

Her most recent film, 2015’s documentary No Home Movie, features long conversations with her mother, who survived Auschwitz and had never been able to talk about it. The film was poorly received at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland. According to her sister, Akerman had been on a downward emotional spiral before that, and there has been speculation that her death may have been a suicide.

Naturally, Akerman always refused to be categorized as an experimental filmmaker or, despite her films’ lesbian content, as a gay filmmaker, refusing to enter works in gay film festivals. Identity-politics activists snarled about that, but Akerman, not surprisingly was unfazed. 

She merely continued subverting just about everything about conventional cinema.

susanc@nowtoronto.com | @susangcole

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