​

 

  

What will happen when I have finished watching every slightly watchable show on Netflix? It feels as if the answer is right around the corner, hiding behind the next cooking show I watch, or the next bad-guy-turned-good character who fails to involve me emotionally as I sit on my sofa and binge-watch the reality of COVID-19 away. In the first economic quarter of April 2020, as reported by the Xinhua News Agency, Netflix showed a 22.8 percent growth in subscribers during the COVID-19 pandemic, revealing that my thinly veiled escapist tendencies are shared by many. But when the world tentatively wades back into ‘everyday’ life, confronting the reality of a changed narrative will be difficult. An unexpected crutch is extended from a familiar and often overlooked media: home movies.  

  

Home movies are amateur films, shot without professional direction or intent and are often used to save objects of our adoration from the wear of time. To some, this means visiting the ringing laughter of a childhood memory, remembering those they love, or capturing a moment of exhilaration as the coach blows the whistle.  

But could they mean more?   

  

In April 2020, I came across the Museum of Modern Art’s short film titled HOW TO SEE| Home Movies, uploaded on their Instagram page. Ron Magliozzi, curator at the Department of Film, and his team reveal that home movies were “the largest body of moving image work created in the 20th century”. The culture around home-movie making started in the 1920’s, as manufacturers began producing models designed for non-professional use, targeting the home environment. Magliozzi discusses how most of these campaigns catered to the wealthy earlier in the history of this culture. But the market began to grow from this specific audience as video cameras became more affordable, and one could see more of a community’s history reflected in the pieces. Magliozzi discusses in the short film how home movies were “capturing the sadness and darkness of… the American 20th century”, with a clear window into heteronormative gender roles, segregation, and pollution. While home movies might’ve been made with the intention of preserving a certain moment for the person shooting it, the details of the time and place inevitably define the background of people we are watching. Because these extra details are captured unintentionally, it becomes impossible to minimise their impact on how we see life around the people in a home movie.   

  

Home movies tell stories, not only of the people or places or objects being screened but also of the person behind the camera shooting them. The intimacy inherent to home movies gives you the ability to introspect a life, even your own, as a witness to the emotion in it. When my mother shows me a video of a baby monkey dangling from the balcony’s door handle or my uncle pulls up a video of my cousins and I playing in the sea as the sun sets, I see the world as they saw it at that moment. Sometimes, I can sense the emotion they felt while shooting but never fully experience it. What if I go back and watch home movies I shot a year ago, a month ago or a week ago? I would see a different world but also be able to experience the emotion I felt while shooting it. The effect of this re-watching is that home movies become reinforcers of emotion. And most often this emotion is love.   

  

Magliozzi said when opening the short film HOW TO SEE| Home Movies, “People shoot… what they love, basically”. This love Magliozzi speaks of is the same reason my uncle recorded our ringing laughter amidst the slow rolling waves, and the same reason I quickly took a video of the daisy floating in the pool. Love is affection, and wonderment and fear of losing something we love. When people shoot what they love, they capture all these ideas of what love is and reminding oneself of each of them could be crucial to well-being as our world opens in the wake of COVID. Based on a 2019 post on ScienceDaily, on a study conducted by ‘The Pennsylvania State University’, love contributes to general mental and emotional well-being, including feelings of optimism, purpose, and creativity. This effect on the brain could result in an easier transition into acceptance of a new reality.   

  

Not only are home movie reinforcers of love, but they can also bring us closer as we adapt. Two of my close friends had their birthdays in March and in June- months marking the start and the end of lockdown in India. When one of my other friends worked for a month to compile videos shot over the last year to send a short amateur film for their birthdays, I realised that it meant more than wishing them- it meant adapting to a new outlook on celebration. It meant sharing realities. On June 29, 2020, the Indian government banned the popular social media app Tik Tok. As people continue to share short videos of themselves dancing or doing about anything else, the audience for it narrows down to close friends with whom one can enjoy an amateur version of what would be uploaded on Tik Tok for mass consumption.   

  

It is the vulnerability of being an amateur that sets home movies apart from any other form of video media and it is this amateurism which could carry us through the change that awaits. To be able to take risks with what might not come under our list of “this is what I know how to do” will be easier executed if we are reminded of love, with love’s ability to strengthen a sense of purpose and creativity. So, I sit down with my phone in my hands and re-watch the daisy float to the edge of the pool, my friends and I screaming surprise and the sun-setting over the Arabian sea as our tired silhouettes walk back home.   

  

  

  

  

Works Cited   

Netflix reports strong subscriber growth in first quarter amid COVID-19 pandemic. (2020, Apr 22). Xinhua News Agency – CEIS Retrieved from http://ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/docview/2392897710?accountid=10226    

  

Yetter, S. (2020, April 9). Home Movies: Magazine: MoMA. Retrieved July 7, 2020, from https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/273     

  

  

Penn State. (2019, November 25). Feeling loved in everyday life linked with improved well-being. ScienceDaily. Retrieved July 7, 2020 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191125121005.htm