Directed by Chantal Akerman

One of cinema’s boldest visionaries, Chantal Akerman took a profoundly personal, aesthetically radical approach to form, using it to investigate geography and identity, space and time, sexuality and alienation. Influenced by the structuralist cinema she was exposed to when she came to New York from her native Belgium in 1970, Akerman made her mark in the decade that followed, exploring the possibilities of long takes and formal repetition in works like the architectural meditation HOTEL MONTEREY, the obsessive portrait of estrangement JE TU IL ELLE, the autobiographical New York elegy NEWS FROM HOME, and the austere antiromance LES RENDEZ-VOUS D’ANNA. Her towering achievement, however, remains JEANNE DIELMAN, 23, QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES, a domestic epic that has exerted an incalculable influence on the evolution of both feminist and avant-garde cinema. In later works like the singular musical GOLDEN EIGHTIES, Akerman continued to expand the boundaries of cinematic language, leaving behind monumental landmarks that have pointed the way for a generation of artists who have followed in her footsteps.