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Chantal Akerman

Chantal Akerman

  • Belgian director, born in 1950 in Brussels and died in Paris in 2015.

    “To make films, you have to get up in the morning. So, I get up!” Chantal Akerman, Lettre de cinéaste
     
    From 1968 to 2015, the director endlessly “got up” for her work, making forty films, installations, books . . . Trained during her involvement in the New York experimental scene in the 1970’s, she invented a profoundly personal cinema, which modernised genres (the burlesque Saute ma ville, the musical Golden Eighties, the Proustian melodrama La Captive) through autofiction and a sensitive experience of everyday life, its duration and basic gestures. Keeping equidistance between upbeat and down, her portraits of women – herself in Je, tu, il, elle; Delphine Seyrig in Jeanne Dielman; Aurore Clément in Les Rendez-vous d’Anna – shed new light on interiors and interiorities, probing women’s and lesbians’ desires. From in-camera spaces to nomadic films (travel diaries, documentaries), her intimate stories tirelessly investigate History, starting with that of her mother, a Polish Jew who escaped the camps (From the East, No Home Movie) and who she follows in death, a year after her passing. Her powerful work has impacted generations of feminists and artists, from Michael Haneke to Gus Van Sant. 

  • Saute ma ville (1968) – The Beloved Child, or I Play at Being a Married Woman (1971) – Hotel Monterey (1972) – The Room (1972) – Le 15 / 8 (1973) – Hanging Out Yonkers (1973) – Je, tu, il, elle (1974) – Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) – News from Home (1977) – Les Rendez-vous d'Anna (1978) – Aujourd’hui dis-moi (1980) – A Whole Night (1982) – Hôtel des Acacias (1982) – The Eighties (1983) – L'Homme à la valise (1983) – One day Pina asked… (1983) – Family Business (1984) – Im Hungry, Im Cold (1984)  Letter from a Filmmaker  New York, New York bis (1984) – Golden Eighties (1986) – Letters Home (1986) – The Hammer (1986) – The Sloth (1986) –Mallet-Stevens (1986) – American Stories: Food, Family and Philosophy (1988) – Franz Schuberts Last Three Sonatas (1989) – Three Stanzas on the Name Sacher (1989) – Pour Febe Elisabeth Velasquez, El Salvador (1991) – Night and Day (1991) – Moving in (1993) – From the East (1993) – Portrait of a Young Girl at the End of the 1960s in Brussels (1993) – A Couch in New York (1996) – Chantal Akerman par Chantal Akerman (1997) – Le Jour où (1997) – Sud (1999) – The Captive (2000) – Avec Sonia Wieder-Atherton (2002) – From the Outside (2002) – Tomorrow We Move (2004) – Down There (2006) – Falling Night in Shanghai (2007) –À l’Est avec Sonia Wieder-Atherton (2002) – Almayer’s Folly (2011) – No Home Movie (2015)

Films of their lives

“If that’s what cinema is, then I want to make films!” Chantal Akerman, on Pierrot le fou

This list stems from interviews with the filmmaker* and additional information provided by her close collaborators: editor Claire Atherton; cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton; producer Marilyn Watelet; and her sister, Sylviane Akerman. 

 

* Mainly:
- “Une Cinémathèque imaginaire de Chantal Akerman”, interview by Frédéric Strauss for La Cinémathèque française (2000) : https://www.cinematheque.fr/article/1152.html 

- “Chantal Akerman: The Pajama interview”, by Nicole Brenez (2011): http://www.lolajournal.com/2/pajama.html

Their list of films

By clicking on the “commentary” pictogram on the left of some of the film titles, you will find further details and quotes.

Films available on LaCinetek