After living in New York in the early 1970s, Chantal Akerman returned there a few years later and created one of her most elegant, minimalist and deeply moving meditations on dislocation and alienation.
Director: Chantal Akerman, Belgium/ France/ Germany 1977, 85 minutes, DCP, English original version
In a series of precisely composed shots of Manhattan around 1976, she reads 20 letters that her mother had sent her after the 20-year-old had moved there from Brussels to become a filmmaker.
The juxtaposition of the intimacy of these domestic accounts and the lonely cityscapes that Akerman captured on 16mm film together with Babette Mangolte results in a poignant reflection on personal and familial separation that is also a captivating time capsule. The film's long takes (around fifty in total) are not a simple compendium of detached urban images, but a kind of autobiography.
In the supporting program: A Portrait of Ga
Director: Margaret Tait, GB 1952, 4 minutes, 16mm, original version
