This short is part of the New Zealand documentary shorts series called Loading Docs. In this film we have a video booth which has been setup at the Big Gay Out event and people go in with just one question to answer and talk about: 'what does HOME mean to you?' and over the course of the filming the makers had over 130 people contribute. Of course this is only a 3 minute film so while it makes the task really hard to edit it down to fit, it does mean they had a very high potential for some great material. And indeed they do.
The film doesn't really seek to answer the question so much as use it to get an understanding of what it means to those in the LGBT community. This is interesting because in many communities home will not necessarily be where you are safest or able to be yourself if you are gay, and experiences of home or images of home will differ wildly. So it is within the 3 minutes as we see a range of people from the wildly colourful who don't care about anything and certainly would struggle not to stand out, through to those who are much more candid and introspective. Being honest it is the latter ones that drew me into the film more because there were several subjects with pain still in their voices even if their direction was positive and I was more interested in hearing from these than the generally cheerful ones; this is not to say I didn't appreciate the tonal mix of the film, but I appreciated when the film gave more than a few seconds to woman who, for example, were open about such things as sexual assault.
As with several of the films I have seen in the Loading Docs series, it is a film that really cries out for more time; there are a lot of stories and characters in here and if Paterson and Boock do make a longer version using more of the contributions and with more of a exploratory or story-telling agenda, I would like to see it.
The film doesn't really seek to answer the question so much as use it to get an understanding of what it means to those in the LGBT community. This is interesting because in many communities home will not necessarily be where you are safest or able to be yourself if you are gay, and experiences of home or images of home will differ wildly. So it is within the 3 minutes as we see a range of people from the wildly colourful who don't care about anything and certainly would struggle not to stand out, through to those who are much more candid and introspective. Being honest it is the latter ones that drew me into the film more because there were several subjects with pain still in their voices even if their direction was positive and I was more interested in hearing from these than the generally cheerful ones; this is not to say I didn't appreciate the tonal mix of the film, but I appreciated when the film gave more than a few seconds to woman who, for example, were open about such things as sexual assault.
As with several of the films I have seen in the Loading Docs series, it is a film that really cries out for more time; there are a lot of stories and characters in here and if Paterson and Boock do make a longer version using more of the contributions and with more of a exploratory or story-telling agenda, I would like to see it.