News from Home

In the seventies, European-based filmmaker Chantal Akerman lived in New York for a little while. During that period she received several letters from her mother, keeping her abreast of ‘small’ events involving her family and herself. In NEWS FROM HOME, we hear a daughter’s voice reading her mother’s letters: quickly, with a flat throwaway voice that does not communicate with the outside world. Akerman supplements this with her vision of New York: dull streets, cold subway stations, and passers-by. The camera remains at a distance. Time seems to be irrelevant. The minimalist film-style seems to have little purpose, but the awareness of the camera movements and the build-up of sequences reveal a carefully arranged theme: a stranger in a strange land.