Amateur film archeology. Excavations in modern visual culture.

This research project on amateur film archeology is the first of its kind to systematically analyze cinematographic expressions and practices of amateur film. Thus, it defines itself as a developmental project in a field that has not or has only been partially recognized by international scientific research. The primary goal of the research project is the systematic analysis of approximately 7,000 roughly organized rolls of amateur film from the Austrian Film Museum. The extensive archive has a range of filmic documents in terms of time of origin, addressing of audience as well as "authorship," and therefore offers a great basis for the fundamental study of amateur film. From rare early amateur films and a collection of amateur films focusing on the 1920`s and 1930`s to biographically reconstructible home movies, to a unique filmic catalog of amateur films (Collection Apfelthaler, approx. 150 rolls, among them home movies, utility films and actualities); from intricately constructed cultural films to a special inventory of flea market finds of very diverse provenience (Collection Arash, ca. 1930 to 1980). The project aims to reconstruct the history of handed down subject matter, themes and aesthetic forms in their given heterogeneity as well as to correlate them with those cultural practices whose result and expression they are. Therefore two requirements that were voiced during the recent amateur film debate are fulfilled: On the one hand, amateur film is added to the analysis of the aesthetic forms of home movies including the work of so-called ambitious amateurs, and on the other hand, the historical development of aesthetic forms is explored to determine which influencing factors - technological developments, socio-historical aspects or intermediate references - define their genesis. Finally, this research project aims at uncovering factual, historical, social and material information that amateur film can claim within modern visual culture, as well as developing the methodological and analytical tools, expanding them on an empirical basis, and make that information accessible to academic research.

Until a few years ago, amateur films were situated on the edge of film and media studies. Reasons for this marginal position were the lack of preparation on the side of the archives to collect, preserve and digitize vast amateur film collectionsgeneral assumptions of amateur films being aesthetically inferior and thematically redundantcomprehensible efforts on the part of academic film studies to focus on film as work of artOne of the main results of our own empirical work and its presentation and discussion at international meetings and conferences is the conclusion that amateur films should be analysed as integral part of film culture and as a practice of modern subjectivity not as a genre, as film studies have tried to do since the pioneering studies of Roger Odin. Three paradigmatic films or convolutes out of the projects archival studies are particularly relevant for this result and have found significant recognition within the scientific community and the general public:the feature length amateur film >>The Green Cockatoo<< (1933), which recapitulates the history of popular main-stream cinema of its time while working with advanced techniques (hand camera) to compensate for the limited resources available to amateurs. (The project was invited to contribute an article on this film to the anthology on >>Small -Gauge storytelling<< edited by Ryan Shand and Ian Craven.)the films by Friedrich Kuplent, a pioneer of Austrian film club movement, which demonstrate early amateurs awareness of avant-garde techniques (like Kuplents luna park film Prater of 1929). (In a special event at the Austrian Film Museum Austrian avant-garde films from the 1950s-1990s were confronted with Kuplents early films.)the life work of Friedrich Apfelthaler, who evolved from his nave beginnings as a chronicler to become a highly influential stylistic adviser of amateur filmmakers in the service of the famous camera manufacturer EUMIG. (The project-team was invited by renowned Screen-Conference-Board to present its research on the >>Apfelthaler-Collection<< of the Austrian Film Museum at the Screen-Conference in Glasgow 2012.)On the part of the project management the initial role of the project team and the project partner Austrian Film Museum in establishing a transnational network on amateur film has to be emphasized. This network for the first time committed researchers and archives to a joint work program and has laid the foundation for a new type of reader on amateur film, which will be published in spring 2014.