What remains gets transformed. Home movie: home, archive, space of criticism.

 

[ abstract ]

 

My work aims at investigating a twilight zone of cinematography, starting from the places that contributed to determine the uses and functions of home movie.
What are the characteristics that define it inside the domestic space and out of it? Since when home movie, beyond being a tool peculiar of free time in the family, becomes an account of a time and a document to be interrogated? When does home movie reach a public communication space, from the private one of the family?
First, coordinates will be given in order to delineate the cultural, historical, and theoretical context in which the debate about amateur cinematography takes place, focusing the attention on the evolution of technology and on the tentative of some scholars of defining such practice. Afterwards the analysis will be oriented towards some specific spaces and places in which home movie can be situated: the home, the movie archive, and the space of criticism of revision.
From the primordial social function in which home movie was used, in the context of private domestic use as an instrument of family free time and of memory transmission, home movie becomes cultural heritage inside the archive, evolving into a document having the function of historic and anthropologic testimony. The question regarding home movie reusing approaches remains open: each space of criticism is defined by the work process established with the materials; some examples will be presented of authors drawing materials from personal or anyway private archives, and their respective spaces of criticism will be individuated by observing the authors’ ways of relating with the materials.
Finally, it has been taken into consideration the challenge posed by recent technology – namely digital technology and the Internet – not only regarding the comprehension of the radical metamorphosis that took place on the private/public axis with the entry of amateur movies into archives or spaces of criticism of revision, but also with respect to the processes of democratization, participation and active citizenship that a free space like the Web configures.

 

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>language: italian
>pages: 152
>year: 2011

 

 

>where you can consult my work :

 

>you can contact me by e-mail (go to contact page in the website)

 

>HOME MOVIES - Archivio Nazionale del Film di Famiglia

Via Sant'Isaia, 18, 40123, Bologna, Italy
tel. +39.051 3397234
fax.+39.051 3397232

http://homemovies.it/

 

>IUAV - Biblioteca Centrale di Ateneo

Tolentini, Santa Croce, 191, 30135, Venezia, Italy
tel. +39.041 2571104
fax.+39.041 2571773

https://sbd.iuav.it