Chantal Akerman: Filmmaker and Philosopher

by Andreja Novakovic, Costica Bradatan (Editor)

Overview

Chantal Akerman turns her pioneering camera on neglected contexts from transitional spaces like hotel lobbies and street corners, to domestic spaces like kitchens and bedrooms.

Through her wide ranging films, Akerman addresses subjects such as home and homelessness, work and social reproduction, self and identity, and desire in its many forms. This book is the first philosophical study of Akerman's oeuvre. Andreja Novakovic looks at patterns of staying put and moving on in the Belgian auteur's deeply personal body of work, drawing on writers from Cavell to Beauvoir, and Federici. It is an absorbing reinterpretation of one of the most important directors of European cinema, whose Jeanne Dielman was recently selected as Sight and Sound's Greatest Film of All Time

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350361416
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	08/07/2025
Series:	Philosophical Filmmakers
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	5.45(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Andreja Novakovic is Associate Professor of Philosophy at University of California, Berkeley, USA and affiliated with the Program in Critical Theory. She is the author of Hegel on Second Nature in Ethical Life (2017).

Costica Bradatan is a Professor of Humanities in the Honors College at Texas Tech University, USA, and an Honorary Research Professor of Philosophy at University of Queensland, Australia. He is the author or editor of several books, and his work has been translated into many languages, including Dutch, German, Italian, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Farsi. Bradatan writes regularly for such publications as the New York Times, Times Literary Supplement, Aeon, Dissent, and The New Statesman, and serves as the Religion/Comparative Studies Editor for the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements

1. Introduction
2. Home
3. Work
4. Love
5. Desire

Bibliography
Index