Capturing the Domestic Space in an Era of Ubiquitous Digital Media: Chantal Akerman’s No Home Movie

This chapter explores the impact of the widescale proliferation of consumer-grade digital image-making technologies on the aesthetics and cultural position of the home movie. Through textual analysis of Chantal Akerman’s No Home Movie, which is composed using various digital cameras within the domestic space shared with her mother, I argue that the filmmaker self-reflexively engages with the essayistic form and the tradition of the home movie to explore the effects of new media on how domestic life is mediated, conceptualised, and represented in contemporary culture. As I will demonstrate, No Home Movie is constructed around a tension between intimacy and distance between the filmmaker and her mother, a tension which is accentuated by the presence of digital technology in the home. I demonstrate that the feature utilises essayistic strategies to interrogate this tension, simultaneously celebrating the capacity of digital cameras to function as a valuable tool for preserving familial memories and critiquing their tendency to act as a barrier to genuine communication. Akerman’s work thus portrays the home as a crucial site for counter-cultural image production while also interrogating the challenges and pressures posed by the increasing integration of digital technology into private spaces.