This Is A Film (1.7) explores what it means to turn footage into language. Using clips of family home movies found in various online archives, Chloë Bass creates a descriptive piece for the audience to hear and imagine. Where is the film: in the language? In the images that come into each listener's head? Is it shared between us? What do we see, and how does it make a story?

This Is A Film (1.0) premiered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Version 1.1 was presented at Temple Contemporary, Tyler College of Art and Design; Version 1.1.1 was shared with an intimate audience at Amherst College at the invitation of Macon Reed. Version 1.2 was presented at Triangle Arts Association; Version 1.2.1 (an excerpt) screened at BRIC Media Arts. Version 1.3 was presented in Berlin at the Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik and the support of the Association for Performance Art Berlin.  Version 1.4 took place at Portland State University's Native American Student & Community Center. Version 1.5 has been redacted for privacy reasons. Version 1.6 will be part of Columbia College's Art Now! public lecture series. This is version 1.7. Each new edit reflects changes based on the specifics of the venue or organization presenting the work, as well as straying further from direct description of the original pieces of footage.

This Is A Film is part of Chloë Bass' ongoing project "Obligation To Others Holds Me In My Place," a study of intimacy at the scale of the immediate family. Previous projects have studied intimacy between a person and theirself (The Bureau of Self-Recognition, 2011 - 2013), and between partners (The Book of Everyday Instruction, 2015 - 2018)