HOME MOVIES AND OTHER NECESSARY FICTIONS

At the border between
history and memory,
fiction and truth,
the story of our life is spun...

"an extraordinary blend of
autobiography and film writing which
offers a radical new way of thinking
and writing about film. The author,
also a celebrated independent
filmmaker, offers a revelatory insight
into the work of storytelling on film,
and the relationship between the
creativity of the artist and the influence
of upbringing."

1999 Kraszna-Krausz
Moving Image Book Awards
Special Commendation
Also awarded:
1999 Society for Cinema Studies
Kovacs Book Award
Special Commendation

"Citron's work is many things: a reflection on home movies and the stories they reveal and conceal; a meditation on how incest alters a family's story and the impossibility of adequately or accurately conveying the experience of incest, an exploration of what it means to retell one's life and what is lost (or found) in the process. Citron challenges her readers to question how their own personal memories are created and how autobiography as a genre is constituted."
Choice

"A fresh, often fascinating hybrid, as much fiction as autobiography, that forces the reader to choose what and how to believe…Citron’s clarity and unflinching honesty are bracing…This book turns Citron’s theory into a means for living."
Publishers Weekly

"In this profound and revelatory book, Michelle Citron combines the distinctive imagery of her pioneering feminist films with an innovative narrative form to reinvent story as a way of understanding identity. Home Movies and Other Necessary Fictions is wise, eloquent, and best of all, a pleasure to read."
Yvonne Rainer, filmmaker of "MURDER and murder"

"A uniquely powerful book…The result is nothing short of an illuminating cross-genre desconstruction of childhoood myth and fantasy, representation and objectivity."
Joe Bonomo, The Georgia Review

"I found Home Movies so enthralling I started to read it again the minute I reached the last page. It’s so richly textured, with treasures of wit and writing and insight and revelation, I wanted to make sure I had gathered them all in. It is a highly significant and totally winning contribution to women’s autobiographical writing at the edge of fiction."
Kim Chernin, author of In My Mother’s House and My Life as a Boy

"Haunting and challenging, Citron’s account of her life and filmmaking exposes to the light of day the deep links between creativity and trauma, artist and family, the self and the work. A brave journey of self-investigation."
B. Ruby Rich, film critic and author of Chick Flicks: Theories and Memories of the Feminist Film Movement