About

About the Researcher

My name is Neve Rogers and I am a third-year Media and Communications Student at the University of Greenwich. I have a keen interest and appreciation for classic and emerging forms of photography, fine art and am an avid fan of many styles of documentary film. I was born in 1999, well into the digital revolution, but still in the beginning stages of the domestic use of certain technology. Meaning my parents still had an analogue Olympus Trip 35 and were just coming to grips with their new Sony Camcorder, accompanied by many spare cassettes. I’ve always been interested in history and feel it is important to be aware of the past. This is similarly true in regards to my own history, which I am thankful was photographed and captured to mark memories that I can and I cannot remember.

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About the Project

The wealth of home movies footage that I do possess, helped inspire my advanced project idea. I originally developed the home movie cassettes for a video for my sister’s birthday and upon receiving them back, I observed many pivotal moments in my life that I had never seen. These home movies captured significant events like births, birthdays, Christmas, family holidays, school events and small moments of both good and bad.

My own experience watching them, equally mirrored my family, as they remembered memories or recognised signifiers that were relevant to that period. I personally enjoyed seeing people act in a way that was reminiscent of the present, such as my dad’s phrases, my sister’s expressions or my mum’s mannerisms. The nostalgic attitudes experienced by my own family, caused me to want to know how others would react to revisiting their old home movies and what signifies, memories or comparisons they would acknowledge. As well as understanding if their responses were unique or similar to someone else. Therefore, proposing the project question ‘How does old home movie footage instil a sense of shared nostalgia ?’

The project will be presented as a short, documentary film, as I have a lot of personal admiration for this genre and its ability to evoke a range of emotions. I intend to make my documentary deeply explorative, in regards to the participants, as the project centres around their nostalgic responses, in regards to watching their own home movies.

This explains my intent to call the project, ‘homecoming ache’, as it is the literal translation from the Greek term nostas algos, which is the origin of ‘nostalgia’. Nostalgia was previously considered a symptom of depression and so the project title signals a kind of poetic pain and longing for the past.