The Cinematheque

“Colourful, soulful stories of hope and despair are balanced by the garlicky comedy of Catskills jokes … Akerman highlights the forthright display of a distinctive Jewish American diaspora culture, which contrasts with the private and wary sense of Jewish identity on view in her European work.”

Richard Brody, The New Yorker

Chantal Akerman’s return to New York begins by reversing the majestic, intimidating motion of the final departure shot of News from Home. This time, Akerman speaks in ways that are intimate, wistful, and concerned, as always, with formal devices. Her film seeks an adequate container for ephemeral culture, yet its title is no textbook list, rather a quote from one of the many theatrical monologues delivered over its runtime. Akerman made several monologue films; this is by far her most varied and curious-minded one. Histoires proceeds in three modes. Actors, on location in alleyways and parks, deliver what might pass as oral histories of immigration and its attendant despairs and elations. Except that these are clearly shards of memory and invention penned and refracted through Akerman’s sensibility. Interludes of Yiddish jokes appear. And everything converges at a restaurant’s outdoor seating, in a dance-like choreography of pious, tragic, romantic, and warmly dejected loners.

In English and unsubtitled Yiddish

“[The film] is steeped in the brooding melancholia and the nocturnal, insomniac ambience of Toute une nuit … Fans of Akerman’s work won’t want to miss this; its distinctive bittersweet taste lingers.”

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader