I Am Not Home Video

Director and found footage fanatic Bert Hana has been collecting home videos and answering machines for years. I Am Not Home Video is a virtual translation of a selection of answering machine messages and one very special videotape that Hana found in a second-hand store. In the video, someone is filming his house. It’s 2001, and there’s no one home. The person seems to be recording his house for posterity, or maybe for insurance purposes? To mark the 10th anniversary of DocLab, IDFA and the VRbase Amsterdam co-commissioned Bert Hana and the VR studio Purple Pill to turn this video into a 360-degree experience. Enter a virtual flashback to the end of an era and the beginning of a new one. Like an archeologist, Hana points out the arrival of the brand-new Euro banknotes, the prosecution of Slobodan Miloševic and the collapse of the Twin Towers. The filmed house then unfolds around you in three dimensions, in the typical VHS colors. Go ahead and look or even walk around. There’s an answering machine on the table in front of you. You may feel a sense of unease, and curiosity. But should you be listening to these messages?