Chantel Ackerman’s News From Home - Sensorial film-making, sensorial film-watching

  The film unfolds in real time, insisting on duration rather than progression. Rather than a portrait of a city, the film is an articulation of emotional, geographical and psychological distance. The film’s emotional power lies in how its sound and image do not align in a way that reassures the spectator. The letters do not describe what is on screen and the image does not explain the letters. This disjunction forces us into an active mode of engagement, one that is neither passive consumption nor detached intellectual analysis. Instead the film works as a form of thinking, feeling and being. It is a film that unfolds within the viewer’s body as much as on the screen. 

“Through her use of long takes and subdued narration, Akerman creates a beautifully melancholic tone that appears to envelop the entire city. The film perfectly expresses the sense of urban isolation, loneliness, and fascination with one’s surroundings that often accompanies a move to a new city.” (Davey, 2025)

Akerman’s work is often discussed in relation to feminist film practice (Cardin, 2024), minimalism, and structural cinema, but what makes News from Home so enduring is its psychological effect. The film both represents alienation and produces it. Watching News from Home means becoming aware of one’s own physical presence while sitting, waiting, breathing and growing restless. Time is not edited away. It is allowed to press against the viewer.

When I first watched the film, I became acutely aware of my own life unfolding alongside it. The experience going between deep introspection and an almost banal awareness of my surroundings. At times, I felt emotionally drawn into the letters which showed the intimacy of a mother worrying about her daughter’s silence. At other moments, I found myself thinking about the logistics of the shots themselves: the camera placed in the middle of the road, the length of time the operator must have stood there, the cold, the boredom and the exposure. Slowly, these thoughts folded back into my own embodied experience of watching the film which was feeling cold, distracted, slightly bored which would then suddenly move again. This constant slippage between the screen and the self is central to Akerman’s cinema.

In this essay, I will explore how News from Home transforms cinema into an embodied experience of seeing, feeling, and being, analysing how Akerman’s separation of sound and image, attention to duration and framing of urban life compel the viewer to inhabit the film psychologically and physically. I will also consider how these formal choices affect the spectator’s perception, drawing on phenomenology of cinema as a machine of sensation and effect.

Sound and Image, Distance and Structure

The most striking formal decision in News from Home is Akerman’s separation of sound and image. The letters read aloud by Akerman are deeply personal. They speak of money, health, worry, loneliness, and longing. Her mother repeatedly expresses concern about not hearing from her daughter, about the emotional strain of distance and about the fear of abandonment. These letters are not abstract reflections; they are mundane, repetitive, and emotionally Against this intimate soundtrack, Akerman presents images of New York City that are resolutely impersonal. Streets are filmed from a distance. Pedestrians move in and out of frame without emphasis. Cars pass, storefronts appear and disappear, subway trains arrive and leave. There is no attempt to anthropomorphise the city or to frame it as welcoming or hostile. It simply exists.

This refusal of correspondence between sound and image produces a sustained tension. As one critic notes, Akerman’s cinema is characterised by “a refusal of illustration, a resistance to cinematic habits of emotional alignment” (Álvarez López, C. & Martin, 2025). The city does not respond to the mother’s voice, and the mother’s voice does not explain the city. The spectator is left to sit in the space between them.

Ivone Margulies describes Akerman’s work as concerned with “the pressure of the real on the body” rather than representation in a conventional sense (Margulies, 1996). In News from Home, this pressure manifests through accumulation. Shot after shot of urban space slowly erodes the viewer’s expectation of narrative payoff. The letters continue regardless, their emotional content unchanged by what we see. This creates a feeling of suspension and a sense that nothing is progressing, yet everything is accumulating.

Duration, Boredom, and the Body

One of the most radical aspects of News from Home is its insistence on duration. Shots are allowed to run far longer than narrative cinema would permit. Cars stop at traffic lights. People wait on subway platforms. Trains move through tunnels in near darkness. Nothing is condensed for dramatic effect “time creates an othering of representation in her work...Duration captures the inner state of being of a thing, that which lies beyond the control of the organism” (Trivedi, 2013)(Fig.1).

Figure 1, Same street shot without camera moving, from: 2:02-2:42, (News from Home, Akerman, 1976, 2:02-2:42 / 1:29:14).

This emphasis on duration aligns closely with Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the time-image. In Cinema 2: The Time-Image, Deleuze argues that modern cinema breaks the sensory-motor link that governs classical narrative film. Instead of images that prompt action, time is presented directly, producing images of waiting, hesitation, and contemplation (Deleuze, 1986). News from Home exemplifies this shift. There is no action to anticipate, no resolution to move toward. Time simply unfolds.

“The creators invent obsessive framings, empty or disconnected spaces, even still lifes: in a certain sense they stop movement and rediscover the power of the fixed shot, but is this not to resuscitate the cliche that they aim to challenge? Enough, for victory, to parody the cliche, not to make holes in it and empty it. It is not enough to disturb the sensory-motor connections. It is necessary to combine the optical-sound image with the enormous forces that are not those of a simply intellectual consciousness, nor of the social one, but of a profound, vital intuition" (Deleuze, 1989, pp.21-22). 

Importantly, this temporal strategy produces boredom as a structuring device. As Laura Mulvey suggests in her writing on delayed cinema, stillness and slowness allow the spectator to become “pensive,” encouraging reflection rather than consumption (Mulvey, 2006). In Akerman’s film, boredom creates space for thought. It draws attention to the spectator’s own body, to the fact of sitting and watching. 

This idea of cinema affecting the corporal experience of a viewer is explored in Katarzyna Weichert’s 2021 paper which asks “ How does a film affect the sensuality and corporeality of the viewer?” and uses “ Hermann Schmitz’s new phenomenology. His concept of the embodied subject, the sensitivity open for the world, and also the concept of the world experienced through atmospheric drives or ambiguous sensations, allows the conceptual apprehension of many elusive phenomena, which cinematography has learned to skillfully exploit.” (Weichert, 2021 p95) .

In her writings on embodied perception, Weichert emphasizes the centrality of the body in shaping experience, noting that it operates both as observer and observed, immersed in the world yet never fully visible to itself. The body structures intentionality, directing attention toward objects and people, and provides the background through which perception and action occur . This corporeal engagement extends to artistic practice, where painting or film translates the body’s perception into visible forms, revealing relationships, depth, and spatiality through gestures that bridge the eye and hand (Weichert, 2021, p.95). In cinema, this embodied perception is shared with the audience: films offer a nearly subjective space that viewers experience as inhabited and intentional, yet distinct from their own bodily perspective. The act of viewing becomes a form of “peeping” into another’s perceptual world, where the film’s gestures and focus expose lived experience while transforming it for the audience  (Weichert, 2021, p.97). Film, then, does not merely reproduce perception; it manipulates attention, engages corporeally, emotionally, and intellectually, and allows viewers to grasp meaning through the physicality of gestures and space, mediating lived experience rather than simply representing it (Weichert, 2021, p.99).

This embodied spectatorship is key to the film's sensorial effect. The film makes the viewer aware of their own physicality in much the same way that Akerman’s camera makes us aware of its own presence. The camera does not glide invisibly through space; it occupies it. It waits. It observes. In doing so, it mirrors the spectator’s position.

Subway and Self

One of the most psychologically resonant sequences in News from Home takes place in the subway. The camera is positioned inside a train carriage, facing the window as the train moves through dark tunnels. Reflections appear faintly in the glass. Among them, we briefly see Akerman herself, sitting in profile, “ filmmaker is also the subject of the film” (Ruuskanen, 2025)(Fig.2).

Figure 2, Director seen in reflection of subway car window, (News from Home, Akerman, 1976,15:09 / 1:29:14).

This moment is fleeting but significant. Akerman does not present herself frontally or address the camera. Instead, she appears as a reflection, partial, ghostlike and accidental. The camera remains static, and the city moves past invisibly outside.

This image encapsulates the film’s concern with alienation and selfhood. Akerman is present, yet displaced. She exists within the city but does not fully belong to it. The reflection suggests a form of self-awareness that does not resolve into self-expression. It is an image of being without speaking, of seeing oneself without being fully seen.

The subway itself functions as a liminal space. It is in transit. It mirrors Akerman’s position as an expatriate, suspended between home and elsewhere. The letters speak constantly of home, yet the images insist on movement away from it. 

“Akerman is either recording space moving outside of her, or is physically moving inside a vehicle like a train or a car recording static space, or both. The space being recorded is what I would call post-elliptical, a space which captures the in-between image between two images that comes after a key event has been left out through the ellipse.”(Trivedi, 2013).

People-Watching

Much of News from Home consists of shots that resemble people-watching. The camera observes pedestrians walking down streets, standing at corners, waiting for buses. This mode of observation is fundamental to urban life. To exist in a city is to constantly see others without interacting with them. Akerman’s framing emphasises this distance. People pass through the frame without being singled out or followed. No one becomes a character. This creates a sense of anonymity that is both soothing and isolating.

The effect is paradoxical. The film is full of people, yet it feels profoundly lonely. This reflects what it means to be alone in a crowd Fig.3). As I watched, I found myself thinking about how I move through cities in a similar way, often surrounded by people yet emotionally detached, carrying private thoughts that have no relation to the space I am in.

Figure 3, Adults, kids and dog in street,  (News from Home, Akerman, 1976, 05:47 / 1:29:14).

At moments, children appear in the frame playing, walking with adults, passing by without awareness of the camera. (Fig.3)Watching these images, I became aware of time operating on multiple levels. These children, filmed in 1976, would now be older than my own mother. The film collapses temporal distance, allowing past lives to unfold in real time before the viewer.

This awareness reinforces the film’s preoccupation with time as lived experience rather than narrative structure. The city becomes a repository of moments that cannot be recovered, only witnessed.

 “As we watch a film, the continuous act of recognition in which we are involved is like a strip of memory unfurling beneath the images of the film itself, to form the invisible underlayer of an implicit double exposure.” (Deren, 1960).

By observing the city and its anonymous inhabitants, News From Home doesn’t just show us a space but influences the audience to feel what it is like to exist within it. Akerman’s framing of pedestrians, children, and fleeting moments creates a sense of both presence and distance, forcing the viewer to become aware of their own perception and emotional responses. Psychologically, this mirrors the film’s exploration of solitude, time, and memory, making the audience actively reflect on their own experiences of being, seeing, and feeling, rather than passively consuming a narrative.

Street Signs are Secondary Subtitles

Throughout News from Home, Akerman frequently frames signage from shop windows, street signs, advertisements. These textual elements operate as a secondary layer of meaning, running parallel to the subtitles that translate her mother’s letters.

One particularly striking example occurs when the camera lingers on a sign reading “LOOK.” (Fig.4).

Figure 4, Various signs in the film that act as secondary subtitles,  (News from Home, Akerman, 1976).

This word appears without emphasis or commentary, yet it resonates strongly with the film’s structure. News from Home demands thinking as sustained attention. The sign functions almost as an accidental demand, reminding the viewer that this is a film to be inhabited rather than solved. It is simply meant to be looked at and thought about, rather than figured out.

Akerman’s interest in  spoken, written and subtitled  language underscores the film’s concern with mediation. 

“Akerman’s films are extremely slow and meditative, feeling the cumulative effect of the images washing over you only at the very end, finally being hit with a wave of emotion that is entirely unique to her work.” (Ruuskanen, 2025)

The letters are already a form of mediation between mother and daughter. Their translation into subtitles adds another layer. The street signs introduce yet another textual presence, one that is public, impersonal, and indifferent.

Mother’s Voice

The mother’s voice is the emotional anchor of News from Home. Yet she never appears visually. She exists only through letters, read aloud in a flat, controlled tone. This choice prevents the letters from becoming overtly sentimental. Akerman does not perform emotion; she presents it.

The repetition within the letters ( recurring worries and the reminders to write back) reinforces the sense of emotional stasis. Nothing changes. The mother’s concerns remain unresolved. This repetition mirrors the visual repetition of streets and subways, creating a structural echo between sound and image.

“Akerman used to say that her mother, a woman who preferred to forget the trauma of her past, would often say there was nothing to say. And it is this “nothing” that comprises Akerman’s work - in other words, everything meaningful.”(Fondation Chantal Akerman,2019)

The mother’s voice both connects and distances Akerman from home. The letters express care, but they also exert pressure. Home becomes something that demands attention, response, and emotional labour. This dynamic is never resolved. Akerman does not reassure her mother within the film, nor does she reject her. Instead, she allows the tension to persist.

The Final Ferry Shot

The final sequence of News from Home shows a ferry moving away from Manhattan. The skyline slowly recedes into the distance. The letters stop and for the first time, the soundtrack is empty of voice (Fig. 5).

Figure 5, Shot from ferry, (News from Home, Akerman, 1976, 01:26:00 / 1:29:14).

This moment might appear to offer closure but it does the opposite. The absence of the mother’s voice feels abrupt, unresolved. The city fades, but nothing replaces it. The ferry shot reinforces the film’s central theme: distance is not something to be overcome, but something to be lived with. It is something that you feel, you be, you see. Akerman resists nostalgia in this ending (Ruuskanen, 2025) . The city is not romanticised, nor is home idealised. Both exist as spaces of longing and discomfort.

News from Home transforms cinema into a lived, psychological experience, where time, space, and perception are felt as much as they are observed. Through its separation of sound and image, its use of long, unbroken takes and its abandonment of conventional narrative closure, the film compels the viewer to inhabit the world of the screen physically and mentally. Sitting through its measured pace is itself an exercise in endurance and meditation. The audience becomes aware of their own body, their own attention, and their own perception.

Akerman’s method of filming the city with pedestrians passing, children moving through space and  reflections caught in windows creates a paradoxical sensation of presence and absence. We are immersed in the rhythms of life, yet aware of our separation from it. In seeing the city we are reminded of our own solitude. Personally, watching the film made me go between introspection about my own life and awareness of the physicality of the film itself (the cold, the waiting, the passage of time). These bodily and psychological responses mirror Deleuze’s ideas of cinema as a machine of perception and affect, where the viewer is drawn into a shared sensory experience rather than a narrative plot (Deleuze, 1989).

In this way, News from Home demonstrates that cinema is not simply a medium for telling stories but is a medium for thinking, feeling, and being. By foregrounding the passage of time, the physicality of the spectator, and the lived experience of urban space, Akerman’s film turns the act of watching into an embodied encounter. We do not merely watch the letters, the streets, or the subway but inhabit them. The film’s power lies in this ability to render visible the invisible threads of longing, displacement, and attention, reminding us that to watch is to feel, to move, and to be. In this sense, Akerman shows that cinema’s true potential is not only in what it shows, but in how it makes us perceive, inhabit, and experience the world.

Bibliography

Ackerman, C. (Director) (1977) News from Home [Film]. France: Janus Films.

Álvarez López, C. & Martin, A. (2025) Chantal Akerman: a primer. Sight and Sound. Available at: https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/chantal-akerman-primer (Accessed: 30 December 2025). 

Cardin, F. (2024) Chantal Akerman as “auteur”: contradictions of the discourse and posture of a filmmaker. Crossways Journal. Available at: https://crossways.lib.uoguelph.ca/index.php/crossways/article/view/8063 (Accessed: 30 December 2025).

Davey, K,(2025) Review: “News From Home” Is A Slow Cinema Snapshot of 1970’s New York. Available at: https://www.cinemaescapist.com/2025/10/review-news-from-home-akerman/ (Accessed: 30 December 2025). 

Deleuze, G. (1989) Cinema 2: The Time-Image. London: Continuum

Deren, M. (1960), Cinematography: The creative use of reality, Daedalus, 89(1), pp. 150-167.

Fondation Chantal Akerman, (2019),News from Home: The Films of Chantal Akerman. Available at: https://chantalakerman.foundation/news-from-home-the-films-of-chantal-akerman/ (Accessed: 2 January 2026). 

Margulies, I. (1996) Nothing Happens: Chantal Akerman’s Hyperrealist Everyday. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Mulvey, L. (2006) Death 24x a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image. London: Reaktion Books.

Ruuskanen, E, (2025) Chantal Akerman: the heartbreaking poetry of News From Home. Available at: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/chantal-akerman-the-heartbreaking-poetry-of-news-from-home/ (Accessed: 1 January 2026).

Trivedi, D, (2013) The Other Akerman: The Essay Film in News From Home (1976). Available at: https://projectorhead.in/archives/nine/the-other-akerman/ (Accessed: 2 January 2026). 

Weichert, K. (2021), Phenomenology of Film Experience in Relation to Corporeal Involvement in the World, Journal of Chinese Language and Culture Studies, 44(3). Available at: https://jcla.in/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/JCLA-Vol.-44-No.-3-2021_Katarzyna-Weichert.pdf (Accessed: 2 January 2026).