Chantal Akerman, Belgian filmmaker, film theorist and lesbian feminist iconographer of women’s lives, died suddenly on Oct. 5, reportedly a suicide. She was 65. Akerman directed more than 40 films and television projects and at the time of her death had been attending and speaking at screenings of her most recent film, No Home Movie.
The tragic end to the brilliant filmmaker’s long career came less than a year after the death of her mother, Natalia, a Holocaust survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Akerman had filmed her mother’s final days in her Brussels apartment. That video essay, No Home Movie, is part of an upcoming retrospective of Akerman’s work in London in late October where Akerman was also to teach master classes in film.
Akerman, who suffered from bipolar disorder which she discussed in several interviews, notably "The Pajama Interview" with French film theorist Nicole Brenez, had been hospitalized for depression and was released just 10 days prior to her death. She was due to be in New York on Oct. 7 for a series of screenings of No Home Movie at the New York Film Festival. She was found dead late on the night of Oct. 5.
Festival director Kent Jones posted a statement about Akerman on the NYFF website, and shared a glimpse of her persona, noting that she was "direct, tough and emotionally extravagant. She was small in stature, but she commanded a room with her fatigued stance, her grand and sometimes wicked smile, her wild rough-grained voice and her eyes. The eyes had it. I’ve rarely looked into a pair of eyes so bewitching."
Akerman stunned the film world from a young age and has been compared with film icons Orson Welles and Jean-Luc Godard, who she said repeatedly had turned her into a filmmaker. Numerous filmmakers have cited her as an influence, including queer filmmakers Gus Van Sant, Sally Potter and Todd Haynes.
Her most recent narrative film was Almayer’s Folly, based on the Joseph Conrad novel, which she filmed in Cambodia. Other recent work includes The Captive, Over There, South and From the East. She also taught at City College in New York, but was not teaching this semester.