Letters from Home (film)

It follows a multitude of figures from the Toronto art community who deliver messages about living with AIDS, which are spliced with home videos, found and archive footage, and other film techniques.

[1] The film's narration was primarily based on the speech "Why We Fight" by the LGBT rights activist Vito Russo, which was delivered at a protest in 1988 which Hoolboom attended.

[8] Roger Hallas, director of the LGBT Studies Program at Syracuse University, writes that Letters from Home is based on esthetics of "fragmentation and dispersal", emphasising the multicultural cast and camera work, which varies from "talking head" close-ups to voice overs.

[3] A writer from the Visions du Réel film festival in Nyon, Switzerland, noted Letters from Home as showing Hoolboom's expertise in "captivat[ing] his audience" through the personal approach used.

[13] Hallas writes that the film "exemplifies" the use of archival footage by LGBT media to "bear witness to the exigencies of AIDS" in modern times.

The filmmaker Bart Testa gave a scathing review, describing Hoolboom as a "magpie montagist" like Bonnie Sherr Klein with "dial-a-stylistic" touches found throughout the short.

Released by the Université du Québec à Montréal and subtitled by Waugh, the film was paired with Esther Vasquette's Le Récit d'A.