It is with great sadness that I learned of the death of Chantal Akerman. A masterful figure of cinema and contemporary art has left us.
From the age of eighteen, she gave masterpieces of a plastic and formal beauty that later influenced great filmmakers. Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Brussels, where she follows in real time the daily life of a woman forced to prostitute herself, remains one of her most moving films, one of the greatest that has been given to see on the alienation of woman.
Later borrowing elements from music, documentary and dance – and she is credited with a very beautiful film about Pina Bausch – she gave other masterpieces, all of which were inhabited by this gravity, a reflection of a form of inner insurrection. Each of her documentaries also reveals her concern to welcome the other, her emotions and her words – she defined herself as a sponge that listens in a floating way.
The director of La Captive, which had tackled the difficult task of adapting the The Prisoner of Proust, leaves us a filmography that has helped transform cinema, breaking in particular the traditional codes of narration.
A renowned filmmaker, she was also a celebrated artist. Present in many places of contemporary art, his work was also the subject of a retrospective at the Centre Pompidou. I had the opportunity to discover with emotion one of his last installations at the Venice Biennale: Now and his five films screened simultaneously, so compelling and so striking.
All my thoughts today go to his loved ones and to all those who have been trained, moved and marked by his art.