News From Home

Directed by: Chantal Akerman

1977 | USA, France, Belgium | 88 minutes

This screening is part of the series Unfinished Diaries: Exile on Film, presented in conjunction with the exhibition Exile: The Land of Non-Belonging.

News from Home

Letters from Chantal Akerman’s mother are read over a series of elegantly composed shots of 1976 New York, where our (unseen) filmmaker and protagonist has relocated. Akerman’s unforgettable time capsule of the city is also a gorgeous meditation on urban alienation and personal and familial disconnection.

News from Home will be preceded by Methods of Signaling, with an introduction by the filmmaker.

Methods of Signaling (2019)

by Olivia Leiter

Part 1 (5 minutes); Part 2 (4:38 minutes)

Olivia Leiter is an artist and educator living in Los Angeles. She received her BA in Politics at Brandeis University and is currently pursuing her MFA at the University of California, Riverside. 

About Exile: The Land of Non-Belonging 

How does it feel to be far from home when going back is out of question? Exile: The Land of Non-Belonging explores the experience of exile and the desire for identity and belonging at a moment when thousands of people are being torn away from their homelands. Coming from Afghanistan, Cuba, Iran, Palestine, and Vietnam, the five artists whose works are included in this exhibition all left their native countries because of forced expatriation or voluntary emigration. They use photography and photo-related practices to narrate their journeys through new environments where gender, ethnicity, and sexuality assume different connotations.

Exile is curated by Camilla Querin, Curatorial Fellow at the California Museum of Photography.