Critical Writing Index

Mining the Home Movie

by Karen L. Ishizuka and Patricia R. Zimmermann

Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008

ISBN 978-0-520-23087-3

Ayisha Abraham writes about her practice of using amateur video footage from India to both examine these private memories as well as how working with found footage allows her to blur the line between fact and fiction. In using found footage, what she terms as “homeless images,” Abraham questions why these videos fall into neglect. How since the very nature of home videos are themselves fragments without a linear narrative allows for them to be more easily forgotten.

Abraham also explores the possibilities available for an artist working with other people’s private video footage. Using home videos, rather than official documents or commercial films, as a lens to look back gives history a more personal and subjective appearance.

In addition to Abraham’s discussion of appropriating home videos the essay also contains a brief history of non-commercial filmmaking in India from the 1970’s onward.

ITEM 2008.197 – available for viewing in the Research Centre

Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited

Film Tales is Straight 8Ayisha Abraham