My fascination for analogous home video originated with the illness of my mother. When I was 14 she was diagnosed with a brain tumour. This was a personal turning point. For the first time I was confronted with the danger of losing something. As a child, your mother is normally a tower of strength. And now she seemed fragile. Fortunately my mother survived the tumour, but her fragility has remained. Chronic weariness, pain, heel spurs, glaucoma, … The ailments are a constant worry. As a consequence her whole world is about survival, with an outlook that does not envisage the future, but is focused inwards.
The imminent loss that I experienced when I was 14 made me conscious of how my mother had changed, making me realize that change does not only entail transformation. Change also means to leave something behind. A loss. Who was my mother before the tumour? I hoped to find an answer on old home videos. The choice for home videos was instinctive. Did I want to see my mother in action? Did I want to know how she talked to us? I do not know. But I do know I was not enthralled by photography, which is indeed a medium of remembrance par excellence.
Video became the key to my memories. Not only the content of the medium, but also the tapes themselves: VHS cassettes as objects of remembrance. This idea was fostered by the VHS industry itself. There were, for instance, plastic protective covers for VHS tapes in the form of a book, with the brown colour referring to a leather cover. Sometimes the boxes were finished with golden edges, as if the tape concerned ponderous literature. VHS as a descendant of the book: a small link within a larger tradition of story-telling media.
But I did not see stories when I watched the old home videos. Nor did I expect a story. I wanted to have a look at the past. I saw the portrait of my mother. How she handled my sisters and me. I saw fragments of a life I had forgotten about or had imagined differently. I mainly saw myself. How I had changed. My old self and my present self do not have the same voice anymore. I do not understand him anymore, but I know that he and I are the same. Looking at yourself and experiencing a distance feels quite fictional. I feel the urge to contextualize what I see. I want explanations and that is why I call up new memories. Memories of which I sometimes doubt the authenticity. The result is that home videos are not story-tellers, but story-makers.
Therefore watching home videos requires an effort. They are not only the alibi to be nostalgic. They also force the viewer to be like that. These images remain meaningless without the memory. What do I see when we look at my old home videos objectively? A young woman with three children. A bad sound, so that a lot of information is lost. Reality recorded fragmentarily. Sometimes elements indicate why the film was made. A Christmas tree, three children collecting Easter eggs, ... The home video does not give us a lot of information.
With this notion I started working on the short film ‘Zoon’ (‘Son’). This was a portrait of my mother. I filmed at the same place where an old home video was recorded. This was a playground gone wild. Meanwhile the old park has disappeared. It has been cleaned up and the playthings have been replaced. Based on the old home video I had my mother sit down in the same spot. I asked her to look around. Just like then. That is how I filmed her.
Apart from that I looked for details that evoked my thoughts and memories about that earlier moment. I edited all these impressions higgledy-piggledy. But I could not hide that I had grown up and had become a professional filmmaker. This being conscious of a knowledge of film and art can be felt in this portrait.
Epilogue:
'Son' was screened and evaluated by colleagues, filmmakers and academics in an informal setting. The film was the basis for an open discussion about narrativity vs registration, anti-symbolic approach, the use of 'flatness' and contemporary texture. In a reaction on that discussion, I remade 'Son'. This remake is not a film, it's a brainstorm.