Why We Make Home Movies?

Why We Make Home Movies?

After reading Karen L. Isizuka and Patricia R. Zimmerman's article, "The Story of Topaz", last week, I was really interested in seeing it. The article brought up the idea that our memory as a society has constantly forgotten many horrible events throughout our history. The film Topaz and other Japanese internment camp films help us remember these atrocities. They state in their essay, "Memory is always incomplete" (126). These home movies help fill in that history about the internment camps. The authors remind us that the camps were,

Surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards but officially and euphemistically called "relocation centers" by the U.S. government, these camps were located in some of the most desolate areas in seven different states, ranging from California to Arkansas. Although the United States was at war with Germany and Italy as well as Japan, only the Japanese—two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens by birth—were incarcerated en masse. (127)

In these home movies, we see the Japanese-Americans playing baseball and having parades. Because of the cheerful activities some viewers will ask if these camps were as bad as Nazi concentration camps in Europe. The filmmaker gives three good reasons why the films look bright and happy. "(1)These films were taken secretly…(2)These films are in color. They tend to make the scene more colorful than the bleak, dusty, and arid wasteland it actually was…(3)These are home movies…I focused on family and friends" (130). We have to remember when watching films like this that there is more than meets the eye. The films look cheerful but underneath lies the atrocities of locking up an entire ethnic group.

After the viewing in class, I was extremely moved (even though we didn't actually see anything from Topaz) by the films. I found them extremely important in the history of America. The essay was a nice companion piece to the films as it describes how the films were made secretly. And the inclusion of the film on the National Film Registry is significant because Americans need to be made aware of their own history. "…the Topaz footage demonstrates the power of visual documentation from within a minoritized culture to present alternative images of American life" (138).

We make "home videos" so we can have the memories that some will forget. We make them so we can have proof of events not matter how good or bad they are. As the authors quote Jonas Mekas, "I make home movies—therefore I live. I live—therefore I make home movies" (128).

-John Morrow