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.
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Community Partner
Chantal Akerman
France
1976
In French with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Credits
Cinematography
Babette Mangolte, Jim Asbell
Editor
Francine Sandberg
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