The films of Chantal Akerman are meditations on space, interior and exterior, and the emptiness within the clutter of both. There is a sense of alienation and distance in her films that can be chilly and desolate. The rhythms of her film are moored to the urbanscapes and architecture she examines and what drama exists is that which occurs in the day to day pace of life as lived, rarely pumped up by any narrative or cinematic devices. Many lives, particularly solitary ones, are free of of drama. Things are quite ordinary. But the ordinary examined can be quite marvelous.

In Akerman’s experimental film News From Home , the main character is New York City. As Akerman reads from letters she wrote and sent to her mother in Belgium, we watch Manhattan in constant movement, a breathing living thing. But even among the people, buildings, automobiles and streets of the city, there is the quiet, vagabond soul who observes and feels apart from it all. Akerman’s letters are not merely messages from home, they are signs of life. It’s as though she writes to reassure herself that she exists.

Shot in 1977, News From Home , captures New York at a time when many artists, like Akerman, were coming to the city to tap into the energy and to be challenged by the prospects of living in the belly of the beast. It was a wonderful time, but it was also a dark time. In these images, you see a city on the cusp of transformation…for the good and the bad. From a purely historical point of view, to see 90 uninterrupted minutes of Manhattan in the mid-70s is a treat for my eyes. Rich with memories.