Domestic Filmmakers

My favorite film of 2004 wasn't nominated for any Oscars. It's Tarnation, Jonathan Caouette's absorbing, disturbing, and visually stunning documentary about his life and the life of his repeatedly institutionalized mother. There's a brief but interesting interview with Caouette in the current Columbus Alive.

Assembled on an iMac from the video diaries he started to record at age 11, Tarnation reportedly cost just $218.32 to make—though the budget surely grows if you include the legal cost of all the audio and video samples, drawn from everything from Hair to Zoom. Several critics have compared the picture to Capturing the Friedmans, despite their rather different styles, because both films would have been impossible in the days before video cameras were standard equipment for an American household. In the words of Gus Van Sant, "They are no longer home movies, but movies of the home." Or, as I put it myself back in 2001:

[T]he most ephemeral of film genres, the home movie, has undergone a radical change: It now involves editing as well as photography, allowing the domestic director to arrange his images in a coherent way. The difference between the traditional home movie and its modern descendant is the difference between a cluttered attic and a collector's den.

That in turn implies that the boundaries between the home movie and the independent film have blurred, and may soon break down entirely.

This flowering won't stop with Capturing the Friedmans and Tarnation. And while it's sure to include its share of poorly conceived crap, you can expect to see more masterpieces too.