New News from Another Home
New News From Another Home relates to its iconic original like a doppelgänger narrative. Almost fifty years after Chantal Akerman read out letters her mother sent her during her first stay in New York over images of the foreign city’s urban canyons, subway stations and building facades, Borjana Ventzislavova embarks on a personal journey through Akerman’s revered work. Images of the original locations are accompanied by emails from Ventzislavova’s mother, the tone of which is a combination of concern and gentle admonitions (the daughter sometimes writes too rarely and says too little), not unlike Natalia Akerman’s letters. “Dear Bube…” is how the “new news” begins, in which the mother reports about her everyday life in Bulgaria: the weather, health problems, family gatherings.