Abstract:
I’ve examined the home movies of
Leslie Bourgeois, a man who used 16mm film to record the lives of his
family and local events for nearly 50 years. I’ve also studied
the home movies of one of the 20th century's most prolific filmmakers,
Alfred Hitchcock. There are reels and reels of home movies like those
of Bourgeois and Hitchcock in the basements and back rooms of many families.
With the affordability and technological accessibility of video, even
more families are acquiring moving images, which document the lives
of people in ways that other archival material cannot. These two cases
studies allow for a clearer vision of what home movies are and the intent
behind home movie making. I argue for a shift away from the standard
move made by critics to view home movies through the lens of professional
film making, arguing instead that we should consider movies as a mode
of public history that can teach us about shifting forms of leisure,
mobility, and class transformation.
I’ve also compared what I’ve
discovered about home movies against some of the many “how to”
manuals” written by professional film and video makers. In making
this comparison I have discovered that the writers of these manuals
have also mis-read home movies and that the “rules” that
many of these professionals ask the home movie-maker to follow can compromise
the value of home movies.