Untitled short film. Circa 1970. Belgium. Written and directed by Chantal Akerman. DCP courtesy Royal Film Archive of Belgium — CINEMATEK. Silent. 2 min.
In this recently rediscovered home movie, three women—Chantal Akerman, Babette Mangolte, and Epp Kotkas—share a precious moment of laughter and friendship while filming Hotel Monterey in 1972 in New York.
News from Home. 1976. Belgium/France/Germany. Directed by Chantal Akerman. 2K restoration by the Royal Film Archive of Belgium — CINEMATEK and Fondation Chantal Akerman; DCP courtesy Janus Films. 89 min.
Described by Melissa Anderson as “one of the most unheralded portraits of the city,” News from Home is as much a fugue of urban geometric abstraction as it is a poetic diaspora tale. Inspired by the letters she received from her mother while living in New York, Akerman returned to the city after an absence and filmed its hot summer streets with her Pentax camera. “Akerman depicts a city that for the most part no longer exists,” Amy Taubin observes. “She begins in an empty Tribeca, then a place of illegal artist lofts and butter-and-egg warehouses. There are extraordinary sequences on the subway, outside bodegas, a 10-minute truck ride up Tenth Avenue when it was lined with auto repair shops and empty lots.” And as J. Hoberman writes, “Although Akerman’s New York is largely a city of non-sites—empty Tribeca alleys, dingy Midtown parking lots, an abandoned gas station tucked into the crook of another building’s wall—the symmetry of her composition gives it the classic aura of ancient Rome.” Indeed, from this eternal city Akerman reads her mother’s letters, conjuring a sense of distant voices and still lives.