Artistic Impulses traces a lineage of grassroots filmmaking, highlighting home-movie makers who approached personal media as a site for invention, expression, and public address. Working with small-gauge film and early video formats, these makers navigated the intersections of politics, culture, influence, and personal vision—often blurring the boundaries between documentation, storytelling, and performance.
The program also foregrounds performance as a central element of home-movie practice. In many of these works, the presence of the camera actively shapes behavior, framing moments that are staged, improvised, or heightened by awareness of being recorded. Here, filming becomes both an act of observation and participation—revealing how meaning is produced through the interaction between camera, subject, and environment.
