User reviews

Chantal Akerman is arguably the most important and interesting female director of her era, yet she is sadly under-known here in the U.S. The range of her work is astounding, from largely experimental 'difficult' works like this, to frothy musical-comedy, to dark, thoughtful dramas, and just about everything in between. I'm so glad Criterion is finally putting out much of her early work.

As for this film, it's an interesting experiment, if far from Akerman's most important.

It's all images of New York City, mostly still at first, with ever more movement as it goes along. The soundtrack is all letters to Ackerman from her mother in France being read aloud over the images. Odd as it sounds, it easily held my attention, though never really got emotionally involving. Once again, Akerman's city images are great, evoking Edward Hopper's paintings. But both the images and overall impact seem less powerful to me than Akerman's somewhat similar - and to my taste far better -- 'Hotel Monterey'.

However with this kind of experimental film, everyone is likely to react differently, and I'd urge you to see it for yourself.

Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman reads letters from her mother with her concerns about the twenty one year old in the big strange city. The visual is Chantal recording the everyday lives of regular people in the city which is almost a reply to her mother. It is experimental for its time and very fascinating. As a piece of nostalgia, it is fascinating to see 70's New York in an everyday setting. There is no character or plot or flashiness. It's simple street level observational filmmaking. Even as a travelogue, it's a little interesting.

This is about the fleeting world out there, the world that comes and goes and fills the senses with all ten directions.

On one hand is the massive city, New York before the makeover in all its brownstone squalor and sleepy routine. The whole film is a series of languid pans of the camera, they capture people waiting in subway stations, a black woman sitting outside on a chair, kids playing in a fire hydrant, street views and Bronx projects, coming and going. If like me, you're drawn to films that wander, you'll be exhilarated to see this.

On the other we have letters that Akerman's mother sent to her while she was in New York as a young girl, she reads these to us in quiet voice-over. She has such a soothing, calm voice. A mother who worries like all mothers do, who wants to know how she's doing, complains that she never writes back, tells about her health and how the store is doing and who got married to whom and that the heat is making her listless.

It's a quietly captivating thing, all in the contrast of exchange between a city that is cold and nameless, vast, and a glad voice from a faraway home that whispers news, love and worries. At one point the engine noise of cars in a four-lane boulevard drowns out a letter being read.

It swims from loneliness to familiarity, because it's all a part of it. And I'm reminded again of how I love seeing America through European eyes. I rank it up there with Varda's Documenteur (it's LA there) as views I'll carry with me, another Belgian, another spirit that wanders freely.

It ends with a long unbroken shot of Manhattan from a ferry vanishing in the distance with seagulls flying overhead. Forget about 'experimental' and 'minimalism', the shots being geometric or not; that's just the brush. A summer was lived.

Chantal Akerman was a young Belgian woman who had come to America to make movies. Unfortunately for her, she moved to New York City at a very low point in its history: the Summer of 1976. The Summer of Sam. The year of "Ford to City: Drop Dead." Graffiti everywhere. Burned out buildings. Garbage. Heat. Blackouts.

Chantal's camera records all this squalor in exquisite, non-judgmental long takes. You can almost smell the place. Somehow, the city arranges itself for her in fascinating compositions of color, personalities, and activities. What's that guy over there doing? What is that woman thinking about?

In counterpoint to the visuals, Chantal reads irritating letters from her beloved mother complaining that Chantel does not write frequently enough and When is she coming home? But how could she come home when there is such rich, baroque subject matter for her camera? We know that after her mother died several years later, Chantal committed suicide. The tension between her mother's letters and the power of the city is palpable.

Chantal has left us this gift of a precise record of a time and place that existed once and will not exist again. The final extremely long shot, taken evidently from the Staten Island ferry, is of Manhattan with its Twin Towers still present slowly receding and disappearing in the mist.

This is a seminal work by Akerman that re-examines the relationship between camera and voice - the documented and the personal, expressing the spirit of mid 1970s New York.

Sometimes the most simple and unlikely of ideas are among the best. At first glance this doesn't sound like much, or at least not the type of picture one would customarily flock to: long shots of various locations in New York, accompanied by voiceovers. Yet there's a deep, gratifying elegance and heartfelt sincerity in this that's unmistakable. Straightforward as the lengthy and mostly unmoving shots are, there's an artistry to Babette Mangolte's cinematography that's entrancing, as this very particular perspective on the Big Apple makes it feel fresh and new, almost like a series of paintings. The imagery of urban sights is unexpectedly beautiful, whether of its own accord or thanks to Mangolte's keen eye, in a way that we tend not to see (or allow ourselves to see) on a day to day basis. And that's before we even consider one of the chief truths of this documentary - that as much as anything else it's a snapshot of New York in the 1970s, and moreover a kind of time capsule. Perhaps some of the structures, facades, and infrastructure remain the same, perhaps not, but between the vehicles or people who cross in front of the camera and their clothes, the shops and ads that greet our eyes, and in some measure even the ambient sounds to greet our ears, we're getting a glimpse of a specific place at a specific time, and it's a minor joy on that basis alone. One is naturally reminded of Agnès Varda's 'Daguerréotypes,' incidentally also released in 1976, and for as enchanting as that was it's a very high compliment indeed.

Then there's the other core element of 'News from home,' the voiceovers of filmmaker Chantal Akerman. As she reads letters that she had received from her mother we also get a small taste of life in Belgium at the time, and especially of the friends, family, and neighbors that Akerman herself had known. More than that - as the letters date to the period when Akerman had lived in New York, often traversing these very streets and subway lines, we are party in some measure to the relationship between her and her mother. The title becomes not just a moment captured in time of the city, but a reflection on a parent's love for their child, of wistfully missing someone who is far away, and in the very least of thinking of Home when we've gone far afield. (Or perhaps, too, a peek at the unspoken disparity between the perspectives of parent and child.) Thus is an air of fond remembrance infused into the presentation, a gentle warmth that couples neatly with the nostalgia of writing letters and the audiovisual visitations to this one time and place. The result is plainly lovely, bewitching, and even heartwarming to some degree. Why, there's almost a sense of whimsy to it all; one can readily imagine a work of fantasy or science fiction that adopts the same tack, showing us a distant world or landscape while letters from home provide a kernel of living, breathing story, whether it's a fragment of narrative or, as in this case, soft emotional context. That such feelings can be evoked by these eighty-eight minutes speaks very well to the power of cinema generally and, here, to the underappreciated genius of Akerman as a filmmaker.

I'll be honest: I love this. Plainspoken as any one-line synopsis is I didn't truly know what to anticipate, but in no time at all after I sat to watch I came to adore it. Many are the movies that have been made about someone moving to The Big City, and missing home, and all the goings-on or misadventures they might get up to in that scenario, but such fare is always embellished for effect, whether comedic or dramatic. Inasmuch as there could be a comparison to such fictional works 'News from home' is much the same concept, except it's perfectly Real and Authentic, and stirs the viewer's thoughts and feelings with that genuineness alone. Outwardly unsophisticated as the craft may be, the skill, intelligence, and care that went into it is indisputable, and the end product speaks for itself. This film is a pleasure. I vaguely assumed I'd appreciate it just for Akerman's involvement alone, and still I'm so very happy with how excellent it really is. By all means I can understand how this won't appeal to all, though as far as that goes the premise should be all the fair warning needed to turn away those who aren't receptive. Yet for viewers who enjoy the quiet, thoughtful side of the medium, or those who find joy in the mundane, I can't overstate what a great treasure this is. 'News from home' is a sublime picture that strikes a rather unique but meaningful chord, and I'm glad to give it my very high, hearty recommendation.

It's weird, but that's what makes it great. My mother said that I was born an observant, not a participant; and this film is proof. To be honest, I wouldn't classify this as a movie.

Almost two hours of a camera set up for symmetrical static shots, pan shots that range from 90 to 360 degrees, and track shots from moving transportation all while capturing the mundane comings and goings of the residents of New York City, as the director reads aloud handwritten letters from her mother.

If you make it through 15 minutes without turning it off, I salute you. If you make it 30 to 45 minutes, consider yourself a trouper of cinema. If you view News From Home in its entirety, you're serious about saturating yourself with moving pictures.

I watched 45 minutes and stopped. The next morning, I finished the film. I guess I'm not saturated yet.

Good luck.

I didn't know any of Ackerman's work until a few years ago but now I've seen this and the Hotel Monterey. The Hotel Monterey is claustrophobic and, frankly, spooky but also makes it hard to avert your eyes. News from Home is mainly outdoors and doesn't have the same effect but the scenes are still small in their own way.

I first went to the city in the 70s with my father. We'd mainly go to the spots you'd expect: baseball games, the twin towers, midtown. I think this creates a fascination about life back then because I have hazy memories of a very different city. If you like getting drawn in by a certain nostalgia you'll be immersed by this to a certain extent. Even though I was however I couldn't help but feel like the scenes went on several beats too long. If anything I wanted a more extensive videologue of the city from that time.

It's tough to make it through in one sitting unless you're only partly paying attention. If you're the right audience it's worth it. If you aren't you'll either hate it as you get through or turn it off early on. I kind of straddle that, but can't deny that Ackerman's films (the two I've seen) have the quality of living through the time. When in the right mood I love this stuff.

When colors and shapes and reflections and time all coalesce into the greatest movie experience I have ever had.

In News from Home, independent filmmaker Chantal Akerman ignores her mom while prowling the streets of New York documenting summer in the city circa mid 70s. With mom's letters supplying the only dialogue of glum news from Belgium, she attempts to lay a guilt trip on the non-communicative auteur, too busy recording the mundane everyday to respond back.

Akerman soberly records the New York of its day well, capturing the look and style of a community only slightly fazed at having a camera pointed at them. The subway work in particular is strong with a scene featuring a drab station slowly filling up with straphangers displaying a dreamlike quality. Much of the imagery is mundane and overlong however and patience may be required in sorting the gems from the paste while mom waits by the phone.

The narrator -- Chantal Akerman, the director of this movie -- reads seventeen letters from her mother. Meanwhile, the audience gets to see shots of a Manhattan where people don't look at the camera, unless they are on the subway or teenaged girls.

It's a far piece from the world of Kenyon & Mitchell, but Akerman is not filming events where the attendees might hope to see themselves in a theater. I watched this movie and tried to figure out where each shot was taken. I think I was pretty successful. That game, however, did not take up the whole of the 85 minutes of the movie, and what was someone who was not an adult in Manhattan in the 1970s supposed to do? After ten or fifteen minutes, I decided that the audience was supposed to make of this a portrait of the recipient of the letter, an individual whose mother thinks she is hungry for news of the family, who never writes about whether she is happy or has made any friends (inference: she isn't and hasn't), and the shots are of her world in New York: first downtown near the River, then a long sojourn in the Times Square Subway Station and finally a ten-minute shot from the stern of the Staten Island Ferry setting out of Manhattan.

I think that with this movie, Akerman is trying to rewrite the relationship between film maker and audience. A film maker makes a film that tells a story, and the audience is the perceptive receiver of that tale, whether it is fiction or fact. We infer plot from the course of actions, from the changes in the personality, status, and relationships of the characters. We derive character from the way in which individual performers differ from the stereotyped roles. What, however, are we to make when you don't see the performer, don't hear her voice, except as a hurried reader of letters?

Well, the stereotypical responses fall neatly into two types. The first type says "Dagnabit! I came here to see a movie with interesting characters and a story! This is awful!" The second says "Ahah, this is new and interesting technique. I get what the auteur is trying to do, and approve, because that makes me a smarter, more percipient viewer." Which are you?

As for me, my reaction is "Interesting technique, but I'd prefer a little more effort from the film maker than forcing me to either fall asleep or make up my own story out of rags and tags." That's because I don't insist on a purely conventional story, but rather than being such an intelligent viewer that I get exactly what Akerman is trying to do, I'd like to have some character.

This is certainly a different movie. It won't be for everyone's taste, but it still manifests unquestionable virtues.

A simple idea, explored to the limit and which, in essence, works, although we can question whether it has not been stretched too far. It would be a perfect short or medium length film. It was an excessive, repetitive and sometimes monotonous feature film.

However, there are two positive aspects to highlight in this work. On the one hand the documentary aspect. It is a time capsule, which has preserved an hour and a half of the daily reality of New York City in the seventies. Not a simple fleeting glance, or a fiction, with the city in the background, that would be banal. Here we have the real city, the empty streets at dawn, life on the subway, in the empty corners, where life passes peacefully, in the ones full of people, where the hustle reigns. It is a piece of reality, of the daily life of the city and its inhabitants, which is ripped from the past and bequeathed to posterity. Something that touches deeply, in the soul of the spectator (at least in this one, which I was).

On the other hand, the contrast between the human and sentimental richness of the letters read, monotonous and banal in form, but full of life and feeling, and the anonymous coldness of the streets, the cars, the nameless people that fill the screen, but are complete strangers, it shows a solitude of exile, where the urban hustle overcomes the monotony of the indirect discourse.

Finally, it is a film by a young filmmaker who, with little means and some imagination, managed to capture, on film, an important period of her life, expressing in repetitive and banal silences and words, the contradictions that filled her soul as an emigrant and her curiosity, typical of youth.

News from Home (1977) was written, narrated, and directed by Chantal Akerman.

Chantal Akerman left her home in Brussels for New York City when she was 20 years old. She lived in NYC for three years. She made some experimental films, and then returned to Brussels. She directed her masterpiece, Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles in 1975. When she returned to NYC, she returned to her old haunts and made a movie of some of the areas in which she had lived before she was famous.

This film, News from Home, is a series of long takes of scenes in the city. It couldn't have been easy, but she managed to avoid a single striking image of the New York.

Sometimes the camera is still, and we see people walking by. Other times, we peer into deserted diners (think Edward Hopper). Sometimes she records from a moving vehicle. Other times from a subway station platform and then from inside a graffiti-tagged subway car. The last scene shows water--probably shot from the Staten Island ferry.

Think of Rick Steves New York, and then turn around 180 degrees and you get Chantal Akerman's New York. People barely notice her and her cameraperson. She barely notices them.

There's no dialog. There are traffic sounds, but apparently they were dubbed in after the movie was made. What we have instead is Akerman reading letters that her mother sent to her in the early 1970's. The content of the letters fall roughly into three parts: urging Akerman to write and complaining when she doesn't; news from home; desire of her mother that she come back to Brussels.

When Akerman reads the letters, her mother comes across as childish and somewhat pathetic. However, remember that her 20-year-old daughter is living 3,700 miles away, with no steady source of income, and without a working knowledge of English.

As a parent, I say, "Why didn't you write home more often when it meant so much to your mother?" "Why didn't you visit your uncle who lived in New York?" "Why would you want to make this movie?"

There are no breathtaking vistas in this film, so it worked well on the small screen. News from Home has a strong IMDb rating of 7.5. Here's a case where I say, "Did they see the same movie I saw?"

This film came as part of the Criterion Eclipse Series 19-Chantal Akerman in the Seventies. Besides News from Home, this three-DVD set included La Chambre (1972), Hotel Monterey (1972), Je Tu Il Elle (1975), and Les Rendezvous D'Anna (1978). I've reviewed all of them for IMDb.

Following the epic JEANNE DIELMAN Akerman has relocated from old Europe to the very heart of the new world,in other words New York City.She has also made a much shorter film and one without a star,in fact without any stars at all.The images of New York,its streets,subways and buildings ,lovingly shot by camera-person Babette Mangolte,act as counterpoint to the soundtrack,not just the monotonous sounds of everyday life but the sound of the director's voice reading the letters written to her by her mother in Belgium. Akerman left home when she was twenty without telling her parents and this film records the sights and sounds of the strange city she found herself in,her alienation reinforced by the news her mother related from a distant continent.At once a film about America,urban life,loneliness,the place of the spectator,the film is incredibly sensual,a mosaic of images,colours,sounds.

If you've ever wanted to just stand in front of a painting and stare at it, this is your chance. Or, alternately, like a whole gallery of your favorite artist for you spend an hour and a half studying their pieces.

"News From Home" gives you that chance. It isn't a movie for the average viewer, or even the average museum goer. It's introspective, spellbinding and gorgeous, given a chance. I loaned it to a friend and suggested he "let yourself go" while watching it, and he reported "it turned into magic once I let it flow through me."

If you want things that blow up, swear words, and sex, you are in the way wrong place sister. This is one of the best art films I have ever seen, without all that inaccesible interiority of so many other "art" film makers.

It's more like a personal documentary, which sounds impossible to pull off doesn't it? Well, Derek Jarman's "Blue" pales to this private gallery of scenery and emotion, which makes "News" far advanced, cuz "Blue" is my fave of his.

This film is a self-indulgent affront to Cinema itself. Dull and self-absorbed to an infuriating degree, it stands not only as an insult but as a warning. That it is not only possible to create such an awful film but also to induce otherwise intelligent film- goers to buy into the idea that it's worth watching.

It might have worked had it been presented as a Dada-esque satire about film-making or familial angst. I highly recommend that anyone interested in cinema should watch this, for no other reason than to understand just how bad things can get in "documentary film-making".

This film is a perfect example of a film too personal and unrelatable to be of any interest to anyone other than the author herself.

Documentaries are usually safe from such errors as they capture the unexpected and the unscripted so the audience gets their share of real-life surprises (Court and Cortney, Sherpa, Capturing Friedmans, come to mind). Even with less successful examples, I have never seen a documentary that didn't provide something of interest.

That's why so far, for me at least, documentaries have been a safe bet. But, as they say, there's a first time for everything, and this is it.

News From Home is a documentary only in the name of the genre that someone attached to it. In reality, this is a protracted read of soulless letters from a mother to her daughter, talking about the mundane and superficial. It may as well have been made into a bad radio drama, as a failed one act attempt. The letters are presented as the filmmakers lifeless voice-over, and are forcefully paired with unrelated images of dead-end streets, loading docks, and bankrupt businesses of 1970's NYC.

Only if you are a masochist who's enjoys being tortured by a monotonous drone describing someone's flu, cost of postage, or father's low blood pressure, you may be able to make it through this film. Otherwise, News From Home was made for one viewer only, the director/writer herself and I am not sure that it was successful at that either.

I saw this film yesterday in a theatre, and admittedly the print looked like it has seen better days. While the idea of letters from home-- in this case from the filmmaker's mother in Belgium-- being used as a narrative device over images is an intersting idea, "News from Home" proves that it's difficult to keep up a device for very long... or, in any case, that it has to be more carefully structured. Besides some interesting shots of 1970's New York (when we all should have been snatching up real estate) and the mesmserizing silence of urban landscape and isolated people, this film is largely tedious.

The main problem, as I see it, with this extremely depressing film is that much of its target audience (i.e. The suicidal) will not be around to view it.