Film screening: Home Tarnation (Jonathan Caouette 2003)
Third part of screening and panel discussions of the series "Home Movies: Surveillance and the Family"
Event description
Birkbeck Film Season: Department of Psychosocial Studies and Gender Studies and Ralph Samuel History Centre
From the Oresteia to The Godfather, the family has been a primary unit of drama and the site of tragedy. In Hollywood the family remains the preferred site of redemption as well as the ideal object to threaten with malevolent external forces. The family, it seems, must be protected at all costs but it is also persecuted by the relentless gaze and eaves-dropping of documentaries and reality TV. The extent and intensity of representations and observations of the family in contemporary visual culture testify to the psychic and social anxiety it evokes.
The main form of surveillance in the family has been the self-surveillance of the home movie and it is via this internal, reflexive gaze that we will be looking at the family in this series. In particular we will be examining the relationships between the vicissitudes of family life, audio-visual technologies, documentary and fantasy.
Screenings and Panel Discussions:
Tarnation (Jonathan Caouette 2003)
Panel: Dr Catherine Grant (Sussex University), Dr Michael Lawrence (Sussex University) Chair: Gordon Hon (Winchester School of Art)
Please note this is a free event and open to the public but the audience is asked to remain for the discussion.
