News From Home (1976) by Chantal Akerman
Sunday, April 26, 1987, 8:00 pm
News From Home by Chantal Akerman
Photographed by Babette Mangolte, 1976, 90 min.
Chantal Akerman has emerged as one of the most audacious and compelling European filmmakers of the past decade. Akerman’s films are unsettling experiences, confronting the audience with issues of female sexuality within a compelling formal construction. News from Home was Akerman’s next film after the prize-winning Jeanne Dielman. It contrasts images of New York with letters Akerman received from her mother during her first trip to New York (and away from home), moving between the European myth of America and the reality that Akerman discovered. ‘I think that it’s a voluptuous film, because of the noise, the images, the colors. Sensual delight — there are a lot of people who don’t know anymore what that is.’ —C.A.