THE INHABITED HOUSE

“These walls have seen my life.” A loving ode to the house of creator Diego Kompel’s grandparents, this short documentary offers us a warm look back on the flows of family life over time and generations. Through VR technology, we’re invited into the intimate surroundings of the grandparents’ living and dining rooms. Grown still and quiet, a dwelling that once hosted boisterous family gatherings comes vividly back to life with projections of home video footage onto its interiors.
In this way, one family’s timeline across decades is ordered and made visible, reviving traces of grandparents and great-grandparents, aunts and cousins, toddlers and first footsteps in the very space where these memories were made.
The Inhabited House is a wistful meditation on the textures of the familiar, and the way the interconnection of relationships are the threads that make a life. By delving into the archive of home videos, the project recalls the tradition of older technologies like film reels and slide projectors in sharing and handing down family legacies.