News From Home

Director: Chantal Akerman

1976 / 85min / DCP

Akerman was 26 years old and living in New York City, away from her native Belgium and her mother, when she teamed with DP Babette Mangolte to film this diary/essay/poem in subway stations and on street corners, their images to eventually be paired with Akerman’s recitals of her mother’s fretful letters. Arguably this extraordinary filmmaker’s most perfect and poignant nonfiction work, both one of the greatest portraits of a city ever put on film and a troubling, touching depiction of maternal love. Screens in the English-language version.

“Though Chantal Akerman’s voice can be heard throughout News from Home, her image is only briefly glimpsed, in a reflection on the train. We can’t quite see her, but others undoubtedly can—men, especially, gawk unashamedly, a reminder that the graffiti-covered subway of 1976 New York was often a place of danger and hostility.” —Series curator Genevieve Yue

Distributor: Janus Films

Part of Trains: Local Routes