Future families in the past tense: strategies of using home movies in documentary films

Synopsis This thesis aims to define the basic strategies used to tackle and process home movie footage in compilation documentary films by Péter Forgács, Jan Šikl and Marek Šulík. It also aims to outline how these strategies influence and regulate the ways the historical period in question is communicated in these films. The source material of the home movie will first be discussed in its original family context as the product of a specific media memory practice that at the same time determines the rhetoric and aesthetics of this material. In the second part, the thesis will focus on two basic strategies for the use of home movie footage in these films. While the first strategy uses home movies to thematize and problematize the possibilities of historical representation, the second one exploits the mode of authenticity and strong affective potential of the home movie to block out active viewer engagement