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News from Home

1976 film by Chantal Akerman

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 19, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

News from Home is a 1976 French-language avant-garde documentary film directed by Chantal Akerman. The film consists of long takes of locations in New York City set to Akerman's voice-over as she reads letters that her mother sent her between 1971 and 1973 when Akerman lived in the city. Despite being relatively obscure, it has been featured in both Sight and Sound's director's and critic's poll to determine the greatest films of all time.

Editorial summary

“News from Home” enters the record as 1976 film by Chantal Akerman. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what News, Home and film can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive route into publication, performance and collection histories when the underlying object or edition remains clearly identified. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1976, 1971, 1973—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around News, Home and film.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“News from Home” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, News, Home and film provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1976, 1971 and 1973.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “News from Home”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow News from Home primary sources, News from Home archive and News research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “News from Home”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “News from Home” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.