Through a strongly interdisciplinary methodology combining methods in the humanities with studies in the social sciences, a new, transnational model to analyse screen narratives of housing precarity, their production and circulation has been devised. Across a range of documentaries, essay films, realist features and short fiction, non-fiction and “hybrid” films, the project investigated the representation of the ongoing housing crisis and traced its intersections with the developing corpus of housing precarity in the pandemic. The project theorised a “precarious home genre” to describe the recurring types of narratives (as reflected in thematic and formal aspects) across these different media forms and formats. These contribute, it was found, to an emerging “cinema of housing resistance”. This model was applied in publications and research presentations the Fellow produced during the course of the action. In detail, the work consisted of analysing the film and media case studies and categorising them according to different recurring themes, spaces and formal aspects. Within the broader focus on representation of marginalised communities, the research has identified a particular area of interest in representations of two experiences portrayed in the films: youth and motherhood, often in relation to gender and labour. Specific publications and research presentations addressed this range of aspects. The research found that the large majority of ‘precarious home’ narratives are directed and produced by women. Vulnerable to housing precarity, especially when multiple factors are present (i.e. economic fragility, domestic violence), women nevertheless play a crucial role in housing justice movements and media production. Despite its importance, women’s labour is often invisible, as they are still marginalised in terms of access and retention in the film and media industries, as feminist scholarship demonstrated. Women making housing films also experience these limitations.
