Filmmaker Heddy Honigmann died on Saturday at the age of 70, after “a long battle with MS and cancer”, her family announced on Sunday morning. Relatives told ANP news agency that Honigmann died in Amsterdam “in the presence of her loved ones”.
Honigmann, who was born in 1951 in the Peruvian capital Lima, became one of the most important film makers in the Netherlands. In total she made about forty films, such as the feature films chimeras (1987) and Bye (1995). Well-known documentaries include O Amor Natural (1993), The Underground Orchestra (1997) and crazy† With the latter title, about the experiences and memories of Dutch Blue Helmets of war zones where they were active, she won a Golden Calf in 1999 for the Best Long Documentary. She also received the same award for her documentary foreverset in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.
In 2016 Honigmann won the oeuvre prize of the Prince Bernhard Cultuurfonds. Honigmann’s work has also been praised abroad, and films have been shown at international festivals. In 2003 a retrospective of her work was shown at the MoMa in New York.
Latest autobiographical documentary
Honigmann, whose father moved to Peru after surviving the Mauthausen concentration camp, studied film at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome. She then came to the Netherlands in the late 1970s, where her oeuvre was created. During the production of her films she left a lot of room for improvisation, she talked about the making process in interviews. On NRC she said late last year that she makes documentaries to answer questions she has – and often other questions arise during filming: “It’s about discovering something I don’t know myself.” Music played an important role in her work and she returned to Peru several times.
Also read: Heddy Honigmann: ‘There are a number of things that make me want to live’
The last documentary she was able to work on – although she claimed she had many other ideas – was about her own life. She traveled again to her native country and met in no hay camino people who had been important in her life. With that autobiographical character, her last released film is an exception in her oeuvre, all her previous work is about others. NRC called no hay camino in a review “not an ego document but an egoless document”, which paints an image “of a warm woman who is more interested in people than in political systems”. In the documentaries she had made for this, for example, it was about: centenarians, people with assistance dogs and musicians.
It had been known for some time that Honigmann was terminally ill. In the interview with NRC last year, she said she still has plans to make new films despite the illness. She leaves behind a husband, son and stepson.