In her "American Stories," inspired by the writings of Isaac Bashevis Singer, the Belgian director Chantal Akerman explores her Jewish roots but, typically, does so in an indirect fashion-via New York. Set in a city tethered to the past but resolutely in the present, the film is alternately charming and provocative as it explores the links between storytelling and cultural identity. Akerman explains: "Instead of learning my family's story directly from my parents, I had to turn to literature-Singer, for example. But his memories weren't exactly mine, so I made up my own; this film is about memory, but an invented one. I'm part of the postwar generation whose parents wanted to forget. To spare their children, they cut off all living contact with their Jewish roots and left them only the name Jew, devoid of content. What's really behind this forgetting? I probably won't ever really know. But what that question evokes in me is what's in this film: stories, funny stories, sometimes consoling stories, stories which have permitted people to survive history by laughing-laughing although the source is distress." We present Histoires d'Amérique, which premiered at the 1989 San Francisco International Film Festival, in a special 3-day engagement.