Longtime Lurker, First Time Poster (28/F/NYC)

I wanted to write and discuss a few questions and concerns I had in response to Patricia R. Zimmerman's piece, "The Home Movie Movement: Excavations, Artifacts, Minings," which served as the introduction to the Mining the Home Movie collection she co-edited with Karen L. Ishikuza. Because the essay served as an introduction to the entire work - and because, probably, I have not had the opportunity to read the entire book to see if these issues are ultimately addressed - I found it problematic that certain economic realities about the affordability of home filmmaking technologies were not addressed.

In looking at a website that researches the costs of early video cameras (www.mrmartinweb.com/movie), and converts them to current prices, the lowest priced video camera ran around $500, with the average cost appearing to be in the $1,500 range. Thus, while Zimmerman argues that home movies have a vital place in the "history from below" movement in new social history, it needs to be acknowledged that those possessing the camera are not necessarily those best able to represent the "experiences of everyday people" (3). Zimmerman does briefly address matters of class - such as when she references the "managerial outlook" of amateur film footage taken of working-class people in northwest England (4) - but an explicit discussion of the demographics of those owning video cameras seems to be lacking in her essay. Zimmerman makes a series of powerful points about the incredible potential in mining home movies, and their ability to "constitute memory from the inside rather than hi
story from the outside" (20), but there remains the question of who has been left on the "outside" of the home movie lens, and what it meant in previous decades to be the keeper of the camera.

If you read this and comment in kind, please be gentle - while my self esteem couldn't possibly get any lower, the depths of my despair can always get deeper. Thank you for your time and blog space.

- Danielle Thomson