Talk:Stories We Tell

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Are there any genuine home movies in the film?[edit]

The current version of the article is incorrect, I believe, in stating: “The film looks at the relationship between Polley's parents and incorporates Super-8 home movies, dramatic recreations, interviews with Polley's siblings and her father's memoir. The cast includes Rebecca Jenkins, who plays Polley's mother Diane in dramatic sequences.”

As I understand it, all of what appears to be genuine home movies are in fact re-creations. For example, look at the official press kits [1][2]; nowhere do they claim that the film contains genuine home video footage; rather they quote the producer as saying they shot the film partially in Super 8, and they had to look through people's basements for the right Super 8 camera (not footage, but a camera). The article currently cites a review in the Guardian [3] but that reviewer simply made a mistake in thinking there was some genuine home movie footage in the film (if you see the film, you will realize how it easy it is to make that mistake). The review in Variety [4] does not suggest that any of that footage is genuine; it says, "through canny casting and filming, apparent homevideo footage emerges as wistful reconstruction".

The current version of the article talks about "dramatic recreations" and "dramatic sequences" but the word "dramatic" is at best OR. The recreations are in the nature of fragments, made to look like found home movies, as opposed to "sequences" with a "dramatic" structure. Mathew5000 (talk) 09:38, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • I'm sure you're right. I've just made one minor copyedit to the "Canada's Top Ten" list mention: I believe there's a simpler way of stating that. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 13:43, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]