Every home has so much to say. But only if we were willing to listen. They have stories of people who have lived under that roof; stories of struggles, of redemptions, of wealth and of impoverishment in times past. A silent spectator to ages past, a house bears witness to the history of a place and its people.
Director Tomoso Aramini, in his experimental short, A home history, walks us through the story seen through the eyes of his parents’ house. At the heart of this film is the wide chasm that separates the classes and time that brings them together. A sequence of smartly put together archival footage, depicting day to day scenes from the lives of people from both the classes, shows the materialistic differences between the two, while highlighting the similarities of underlying human emotions; curiosity, joy and celebration that is common for every man.
The languid shots of a pensive house; its décor and its trappings in different lights of day and night puts the viewer in the shoes of the silent observer that is the house, and the powerful archival footage of the milestones in the story of the land, depict the incessant craving of the human mind to conquer what is out of reach; from the skies to our neighbor’s holdings.
The home history is an interesting experiment in form and structure, just as much as it is an experiment in storytelling. The use of music and voices at key junctures in the film work beautifully to handhold the viewer through the narrative, and we are left wanting when the final shot of the film tells us that a lot more is to happen in the days to come.
