Histoires d’Amérique

American Stories: Food, Family and Philosophy

A musing on Jewish identity and the immigrant experience that demonstrates Akerman’s attraction to what she called ‘the kind of laughter that originates from distress’.

  • Director

    Chantal Akerman

  • With

    Maurice Brenner, Carl Don, David Buntzman, Judith Malina

  • Belgium-France 1988. 96min

  • Digital (restoration)

Vacant hinterlands of Brooklyn are playfully transformed into a nocturnal Akerman studio as Jewish New Yorkers recount tragi-comic tales of exile, marriage, infidelity and trauma direct to camera before starting to interact as characters. Of all her films, this wonderful theatrical curiosity is Akerman’s most acute reckoning with Jewish identity, history and the experience of immigration.

Restored by Royal Film Archive of Belgium (CINEMATEK), Fondation Chantal Akerman and Amazing Digital Studios, Paris.

The screening of Histoires d’Amérique on Tuesday 4 February 18:00 NFT1 will include a pre-screening performance by cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton.