Abstract

This thesis examines a subset of contemporary experimental filmmakers who incorporate their own home movies into their films and videos. Close analysis of Helen Hill’s Mouseholes (1999), Richard Fung’s Sea in the Blood (2000), Philip Hoffman’s What these Ashes Wanted (2001), and Jay Rosenblatt’s Phantom Limb (2005) reveals tensions between the private and public functions of home movies as well as key differences between the reconfigurations of home movies and the appropriation of found footage. When experimental filmmakers use home movies, it is often a means of confronting issues of memory; also, the filmmakers most often strive to preserve the home movies because of their personal connection to them. The preservation and screenings of Hill’s flood-damaged home movies (a result of Hurricane Katrina) also negotiate this tension between private and public. In 2007, Hill died during a home invasion in New Orleans. Paul Gailiunas’s posthumous completion of Hill’s final film, The Florestine Collection (2010), constructs a dual portrait of Hill and a deceased seamstress named Florestine Kinchen. Each of these five films and videos focus on the death of a loved one, exposing the absence of images of death and family strife in home movies. The study of experimental filmmakers’ use of home movies provides valuable insight into both experimental cinema and home movies themselves.