THE CAPTIVE

Chantal Akerman was born in 1950 in Brussels, and died in Paris in 2015. Akerman was a pioneer in feminist and experimental filmmaking. Born to Holocaust survivors from Poland, she attended a film school for a brief period from 1967 to 1968, before directing her first short, Blow Up My Town (1968). She went on to make over 40 fiction and documentary films during her life time, including Je, Tu, Lui, Elle (1974), Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), Tell me (1980), From the East (1993) and No Home Movie (2015). She is considered one of the most important European directors of her generation, “whose films have had a profound impact on feminist discourse within the cinema, and within avant-garde film and video art at an international level” (Gwedolyn Audrey Foster).