In and Out of Context. On the Reality Effect and Evidentiary Status of Home Videos
In and Out of Context. On the Reality Effect and Evidentiary Status of Home Videos

Summary/Abstract: Based on Richard Chalfen’s two basic types of contexts of home visual media: the private and the public, the essay analyses contexts that represent paradigms of the evidentiary status and production of meaning: the “what did they look like,” the “open window” attitude and the “how they looked at” paradigm. One of the most characteristic situations for home videos, a primary context is when the people producing and watching the movie is one and the same. In this approach home movies show an affiliation to autobiographic texts. When used as an attribute of feature films or embedded in different contexts, the term home video bears different meanings which I discuss in the analysis of relevant cases.

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