The work of Matthias Müller in the use of found footage has been some of the most prolific of the last two decades (often in partnership with Christoph Girardet). In “Home Stories”, one of his first works, the author adopts a particular approach to film, gathering together a significant collection of Hollywood melodramas from the 50s and 60s (filmed directly from the TV screen) and focusing on the female protagonists – some of the most famous actresses of classic cinema: Lana Turner, Tippi Hedren and Grace Kelly. This kind of supercut, to use a digital language, binds together some of the moments the protagonists live through in their melodramas, isolating in particular their presence in the bedroom or the family home. The obsession with close-up, with the movements of the characters, and the actresses exaggerated emotions convey feelings of loneliness and even claustrophobia, turning the film into an essay on the role of women in this genre and issues of gender in the way they are portrayed, always enclosed within rigid patriarchal power structures. The film has also become a sort of critique of melodramas, a genre which in recent years has been recovered by film studies. The sound track, specially created by Dirk Schäfer, reinforces the insistence on certain formal devices and ‘mise-en-scène’, such as doors, stairs or windows, which acquire a potent meaning in melodrama - their potency being demonstrated by isolation in the essay. The work of Müller insists especially on the repetition of gestures or movements, in a strategy that experimental film has used in abundance, accentuating the redundancy of these cinematographic strategies. A film which deconstructs perspectives on gender and genre in order to analyse the inner workings of melodrama. (DR)