CANCELED: News From Home

press release: In compliance with UW Madison’s policies enacted to slow the spread of COVID-19, all previously announced UW Cinematheque screenings through April 12 have been canceled. The Cinematheque programming staff is currently investigating the possibility of re-scheduling some of these screenings on future Cinematheque calendars. The Cinematheque’s free screening series is currently scheduled to resume on April 17 with Where’s Poppa?. Please visit the Cinematheque’s website (http://cinema.wisc.edu) for further updates and a schedule of screenings between April 17 and May 3.

USA | 1976 | DCP | 85 min. | French with English subtitles

Director: Chantal Akerman

A simple premise: Over footage of New York City, where she lived at the time, Akerman reads letters sent by her mother from Brussels. These sound and image tracks begin to compete, as her mother’s letters grow impatient and the bustle of the city takes over. Like no film until her last, No Home Movie (2015), this affecting experimental documentary explores the in-jokes, quarrels and devotion between Akerman and her mother, Natalia, who survived the Holocaust. Masking the pain of being apart are the awe-inspiring sights and sounds of New York, filmed in the summer of 1976 and full of people, buildings, and stories no longer with us.

A Celebration of Chantal Akerman: Between her wunderkind arrival in the 1970s and her tragic death in 2015, Chantal Akerman was widely revered as one of cinema's most vital and fearless artists. Drawing from art cinema, ethnographic documentary, feminist theory, Jewish culture, popular genres, and the structural avant-garde, Akerman consistently rejected labels in her pursuit of a rigorous, personal cinema. Investing minute gestures, plays of light, and time itself with meaning and emotion, Akerman’s films demand the theatrical experience. This series (re)acquaints us with the genius and audacity of this singular, pioneering Belgian filmmaker.