Remake: Chantal Akerman’s and John Smith’s plays on reality

Abstract

The essay explores Chantal Akerman’s NEWS FROM HOME (1976) and John Smith’s THE MAN PHONING MUM (2011) through the notion of the remake. Drawing on Svetlana Boym’s writing, the ideas of reflective nostalgia and restorative nostalgia are employed to outline the structure of both films, respectively situated within the framework of autoethnography and structural/materialist film. The role of soundscapes emerges then as a crucial challenger of the cinematic language, revealing formal aspects of both films. The article suggests that such formal awareness combined with the notion of the remake as well as the realistic core of both works trigger in the spectator an impression of hyperreality.