15+ Chantal Akerman Quotes On Death, Music And Home

Chantal Akerman was a Belgian film director, screenwriter, and artist. She was known for her pioneering work in experimental and feminist cinema. She made over forty feature films, documentaries, and short films that have been widely acclaimed and awarded throughout her career. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Chantal Akerman on love, life, death.

Lars von Trier is very, very, very clever about women. He gives the woman a space that I don't know any filmmaker does. Because in Breaking The Waves, protagonist Emily Watson is the Christ. Which man is doing that? I don't know any man giving that space to a woman. No one. — Chantal Akerman

I had an awful joke about Auschwitz I drove everybody crazy with that joke. But that joke makes me feel good. You know what "cuit" means? When something is cooked. It's a joke like that: "What are the birds doing when they fly over Auschwitz? 'Cuit! Cuit!'" It's awful, but it's desacralizing. For me, it's good. — Chantal Akerman

Paris is not so square. I'm not good at the geography of the city in Paris, so I'm always lost. Here, in New York, you can never be lost. In Paris, even when I walk to my gallery or whatever, I always take another route, because Paris is not built that way. — Chantal Akerman

Delphine Seyrig is a very proper woman, from high society. She's from the Ferdinand de Saussure family, the structuralist. Old money. Swiss. Protestant. They were that type of well-educated people who could recognize a good artist before others, and she was like that. Even if it was against something inside her. Tell me one actress in 1972 in France, except Delphine, at her level, who would love Hôtel Monterey. No one. — Chantal Akerman

When I'm in my neighborhood, I don't see anything anymore, because I'm so used to it. When I go somewhere else, suddenly, I'm alive. I'm on alert, and I can be fresh. — Chantal Akerman

My father said, "Okay, enough with the Jewish school." He put me into a public school and he said, "If you are the first one in your class, that means the school is bad." That was his humor. — Chantal Akerman

What I hate in movies is all those people you need. And then I realize I do better when I shoot by myself. — Chantal Akerman

Have you seen the film Histoires D'Amérique? It's also a mixture of humor and monologue, and it shows how the Jewish humor comes from drama and tragedy. — Chantal Akerman

The jail thing is very, very present in all of my work... Sometimes not very frontally. The jail is coming from the camps, because my mother was in the camps, and she internalized that and gave it to me. — Chantal Akerman

I wanted to write and then I saw Pierrot and I understand that I could express myself in a more... Also probably, I had an intuition that if I was going to only write, I will stay in one room all the time and never go out. I felt that if I was going to make movies, I would have to communicate with people and it would be good for me. — Chantal Akerman

I went at 4:30 in the morning to a café 500 meters from my place. And it was another city... Totally different than where I go every day. And I said, "God, I will do that again." That's another subject I want to do. It's my street, suddenly different at 5:00 in the morning. I can shoot for one week. That's enough to make a movie. — Chantal Akerman

She who seeks shall find, find all to well, and end up clouding her vision with her own preconceptions. — Chantal Akerman

I'm Jewish. That's all. So I am in exile all the time. Wherever we go, we are in exile. Even in Israel, we are in exile. — Chantal Akerman

You have to understand that I'm a child of the second generation, which means my mother was in Auschwitz, and the aunt of my mother was in Auschwitz with her; my grandmother and grandfather died there. So yes. All of those gestures they work for you, or for them, to fill their time or not feel their anxiety. But the child feels everything. It doesn't make the child secure. You put the child in a jail. — Chantal Akerman

Look at Charlotte Gainsbourg, in the Lars von Trier film Antichrist. She's unbelievable. She doesn't act; she's there. She's great. And you love her for that, because it's so daring, what she has to do. And she does it as if it is nothing. I think she's brave. I fell in love with her when I saw that film. She is a revelation. Total revelation. — Chantal Akerman

Life Lessons by Chantal Akerman

1. Chantal Akerman's work emphasizes the importance of taking risks and pushing boundaries in order to create meaningful art.
2. Her films explore the complexities of identity, relationships, and emotions in a unique and powerful way.
3. Her work teaches us to embrace the unknown and to be creative in our approach to storytelling.