Cinema Deaths in 2015

Another year has passed, and several well-known figures in cinema—both in front of and behind the camera—have bid us farewell. The deaths of stars in front of the camera typically received more media attention, with the news of the death of American filmmaker Wes Craven being much more widely reported than that of independent filmmaker Chantal Akerman. Farewell to Three Prominent European Filmmakers Emmanuel de Oliveira, the most well-known Portuguese filmmaker, finally passed away in April at the age of 106. This veteran filmmaker was active in filmmaking until the last years of his life and held the title of 'the oldest filmmaker in the world.' Among his accolades were the honorary Palme d'Or for a lifetime of cinematic activity in 2008 and the Golden Lion of Venice. He created cold atmospheres with long takes and often static cameras, benefiting from the presence of global stars from Marcello Mastroianni and Catherine Deneuve to Jean Moreau and John Malkovich in his films. His last feature film was 'Gebo and the Shadow,' made in 2012 with Chantal Akerman, Jean Moreau, and Claudia Cardinale, after which he also made a short film. Francesco Rosi, the leftist Italian filmmaker well-known in Iran (with several of his films shown on television in the years following the revolution and an invitation to Wes Craven to Iran), passed away in January at the age of ninety-two. Rosi, who has won the Cannes Palme d'Or, the Venice Golden Lion, and the Berlin Bear, might hold the title of the most acclaimed political filmmaker in the world. 'Salvatore Giuliano' (1962), 'Hands on the City,' 'Anita Ekberg' (1963), 'Christ Stopped at Eboli' (1979), and 'Three Brothers' (1981) are among his most famous films. Chantal Akerman, a Belgian feminist filmmaker, bid farewell to the world in October at the age of sixty-five. Her mother was a Holocaust survivor, and the issues of war and Nazi camps found their way into her works in various forms. Inspired to become a filmmaker after watching Jean-Luc Godard's 'Pierrot le Fou,' she became acquainted with the works of independent filmmakers like Andy Warhol and Jonas Mekas in New York and adopted this style of filmmaking. In 1975, she created 'Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles,' a realistic portrayal of the life of a middle-aged widow, which was praised by The New York Times as 'the first female masterpiece in the history of cinema.' Her last film, 'No Home Movie,' which was screened at this year's Locarno Festival, captures her last recorded conversations with her mother a month before her death. Akerman passed away in Paris a few months later. Her sister stated that she suffered from depression, and Le Monde reported that her cause of death was suicide. Master of Horror Wes Craven passed away in August at the age of seventy-six; a filmmaker who spent most of his life making horror films and achieved great success with films like 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' and 'Scream.' His character Freddy Krueger became iconic in the 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' series, and the story of teenagers hiding behind masks formed the basis for the four 'Scream' films, all directed by Craven. In 'Scream,' he portrays very ordinary killers who can easily be beaten and thrown, and unlike most other horror films, women in these films are not weak beings that a man must save. Christopher Lee, who starred in 'Scream' (especially the first part), stated that it is a film about cinema that connects various layers of cinema with real life and dreams. Stars that have left us also age and die. Anita Ekberg, the Swedish-born actress who became a symbol of sex alongside Omar Sharif in the iconic film 'La Dolce Vita' by Federico Fellini, passed away in January at the age of eighty-three. Ekberg, who was also known as a model and acted alongside Jerry Lewis and Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, became immortalized solely through her role in 'La Dolce Vita,' the best-selling and most recognized film of the genius of cinema, Federico Fellini. Setsuko Hara, a star of classic Hollywood cinema, passed away in October at the age of ninety-five; one of the last survivors of Hollywood's golden age who acted in several prominent John Ford films such as 'How Green Was My Valley,' 'Rio Grande,' and 'The Quiet Man,' as well as for Alfred Hitchcock in 'Jamaica Inn.' John Guillermin, the serious-faced filmmaker known for several Tarzan and King Kong films (the 1976 version), passed away in September at the age of eighty-nine due to a heart attack. James Horner, the prominent composer who became immortalized with the music of 'Titanic' (the best-selling film score with a classical orchestra in history), passed away in June at the age of sixty-one while piloting his single-engine personal plane due to an accident. Richard Corliss, the film critic for Time magazine who began his collaboration with this prestigious magazine in 1980, passed away in April at the age of seventy-one. Corliss was also a former editor of the most prestigious American film magazine, Film Comment. He stood against the auteur theory of his friend Andrew Sarris—who rightly considers the director to be the god of film—and emphasized the importance and value of screenwriters with his book 'The Sound Film: Screenwriters in American Cinema.'