Directed by Chantal Akerman • 1976 • United States
Following her time living in New York in the early 1970s, Chantal Akerman returned to the city to create one of her most elegantly minimalist and profoundly affecting meditations on dislocation and estrangement. Over a series of exactingly composed shots of Manhattan circa 1976, the filmmaker reads letters sent by her mother years earlier. The juxtaposition between the intimacy of these domestic reports and the lonely, bleakly beautiful cityscapes results in a poignant reflection on personal and familial disconnection that doubles as a transfixing time capsule.
Up Next in New York Stories
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Town Bloody Hall
Directed by Chris Hegedus • 1979 • United States
Starring Norman Mailer, Germaine Greer, Jacqueline CeballosOn April 30, 1971, a standing-room-only crowd of New York’s intellectual elite packed the city’s Town Hall theater to see Norman Mailer—fresh from the controversy over his essay “The Pris...
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Permanent Vacation
Directed by Jim Jarmusch • 1980 • United States
Starring Chris Parker, Sara Driver, John LurieJim Jarmusch’s first feature displays the first hints of the deadpan, minimalist-cool style that he would refine in his breakthrough STRANGER THAN PARADISE. Young, alienated hipster Aloysius Christophe...
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My Dinner with André
Directed by Louis Malle • 1981 • United States
Starring Wallace Shawn, André GregoryIn this captivating and philosophical film directed by Louis Malle, actor and playwright Wallace Shawn sits down with his friend the theater director André Gregory at a restaurant on New York’s Upper West Side, ...
