Home movies|modern memories

HOME MOVIES: REEL TIME

Home movies have escaped the domestic confines of family gatherings, lounge-room walls and dark cupboards, to enjoy a renaissance within contemporary, image-saturated society. Why this relatively recent shift in attitude and representation of historical home movie footage within media production and archival practice? I’m interested in exploring how home movie footage and aesthetics have been incorporated into Australian screen practice, particularly documentary film and screen-based art, since 1998. By focusing on several case studies and examples of work, I want to see who is telling stories; how they are inserting home movies back into public history and what are the social implications.

That’s it…a four-line abstract that sums up what I hope to achieve this year when exploring home movies in contemporary life. It’s taken me a long time to get to this point. While I don’t presume ‘the rest will be easy’, I do feel that now I have this statement, things will fall into place a lot easier.