Framing Intimacy: Technology, Memory, and Self-Representation in Victoria Mapplebeck’s Films

Over the past decade, Victoria Mapplebeck’s work has explored the intersection of technology, intimacy, and personal storytelling, using the smartphone as the preferred tool to document autobiographical memories. In works like 160 Characters (2015), Missed Call (2018), and The Waiting Room (2019), she addresses themes such as social connection, health, and single motherhood. Her latest project, Motherboard (2024), employs long-term storytelling through personal photos and videos to portray everyday life and the complexities of motherhood. Mapplebeck’s films reflect on how digital devices not only record but also shape our memories. This contribution situates her work within the genre of mobile-documentaries, where filmmakers create fragmented micro-autobiographies using amateur and digital storytelling techniques. Within contemporary debates in media and gender studies, and drawing on concepts from gender and motherhood studies, it offers a close analysis of how mobile media influence self-representation and memory. The smartphone emerges as both an expressive audiovisual tool and a technology of the self, capable of expressing intimacy, vulnerability, and resistance.