A structuralist masterwork by Belgium’s dearly departed genius of contemplation, Chantal Akerman. Following a minimalist, metaphysical narrative depicting Akerman’s life as a young filmmaker living in New York in 1971, News from Home is composed entirely of lingering, meditative 16mm plates of the urban landscape, as Akerman reads a series of mundane letters from her loving mother, most of them pleading for a reply.
One part city symphony — offering a spellbinding glimpse of New York City in its final gasp before the Trumpian renovictions of the 1980s — one part epistolary text, and one part introspective meditation on the meanings of home, this is a movie that hovers over me like my own mother’s ghost. I love Akerman’s soft-spoken voice over — constantly engulfed and eclipsed by the rumbling din of midnight traffic — and her mute homeward lurch in the film’s final frames. This movie reminds me that our sense of home is so intensely mediated by our relationship with our moms.
Chantal Akerman
France
1976
In French with English subtitles
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Credits
Cinematography
Babette Mangolte, Jim Asbell
Editor
Francine Sandberg
Leading Lights
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News From Home
One part city symphony, one part introspective meditation, one part epistolary text, News from Home is a structuralist masterwork by Belgium’s genius of contemplation, Chantal Akerman.
