Home movie-making and Swiss expatriate identities in the 1920s and 1930s

Film History: An International Journal

Volumn 15, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 166-176

  Schneider, Alexandra ^a  

^a FREIE UNIVERSITÄT BERLIN   (Germany)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 3442892104     PISSN: 08922160     EISSN: 15533905     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2979/FIL.2003.15.2.166     Document Type: Article

References (43)

1. Emilie Altenloh, Zur Soziologie des Kino: Die KinoUnternehmung und die sozialen Schichten ihrer Be-sucher (Jena: Diederichs, 1914).
2. Patricia R. Zimmermann, Reel Families: A Social History of Amateur Film (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995): 19.
3. For the history of amateur technique see Ben Singer, 'Early Home Cinema and the Edison Home Projecting Kinetoscope', Film History 2 (1988): 37-69
4. and Alan D. Kattelle, The Evolution of Amateur Motion Equipment 1895-1965', Journal of Film and Video 38. 3-4 (1986): 47-57.
5. Recent theoretical and historical studies on home movies and amateur film include: Roger Odin (ed. ), Le film de famille: usage privé, usage public (Paris: Meridiens Klincksieck, 1995);
6. Association européenne inédits, eds. Jubilee Book: Essays on Amateur Film: rencontres autour des inédits (Brussels: Association européenne inédits, 1997);
7. Michelle Citron, Home Movies and Other Necessary Fictions (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1998);
8. Eckhard Schenke, Der Amateurfilm - Gebrauchsweisen privater Filme (Dissertation, University of Goettingen, 1998);
9. Roger Odin (ed. ), 'Le cinéma en amateur', Communications 68 (1999);
10. Vivian Sobchack, 'Toward a Phenomenology of Non-fictional Film Experience', in Jane Gaines, et al. (eds), Collecting Visible Evidence (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999): 241-254;
11. Martina Roepke, 'Feiern im Ausnahmezustand: ein privater Film aus dem Luftschutzkeller', montage/av 10. 2 (2001): 59-66.
12. Roger Odin has done genre analysis in 'Rhétorique du film de famille', Rhétoriques, sémiotiques, Revue D'Esthétique 1-2 (1979): 340-73
13. and 'Le film de famille dans I'institution familiale", in: Odin (1995): 27-42.
14. Patricia Zimmermann, 'Geographies of Desire: Cartographies of Gender, Race, Nation and Empire in Amateur Film', Film History 8 (1996): 85-98;
15. Neil Lazarus, 'National Consciousness and the Specificity of (Post) Colonial Intellectualism', in Francis Baker, et al. (eds), Colonial Discourse, Postcolonial Theory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994).
16. These observations are based on a larger project on the home movie in which several dozen film collections were examined. The insights introduced below are built on the basis of representative material from Swiss home movies in the twenties and thirties. In terms of methodology, I have drawn on the notions of 'Grounded theory' developed in the context of qualitative social research. Grounded Theory is a data-driven, object-anchored theory building method. Barney G. Glasser and Anselm L Strauss, The Discovery of Grounded Theory - Strategies for Qualitative Research (New York: Aladine de Gruyter, 1967).
17. My theoretical reflections owe a great deal to Odin's semio-pragmatic work on the home movie (1995). My approach differs from his to the extent that I ascribe greater methodological importance to film analysis.
18. See for example: Richard Chalfen, Snapshot Versions of Life (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Press, 1987)
19. or Angela Keppler, Tischgespräche: Über Formen kommunikativer Vergemeinschaftung am Beispiel der Konversation in Familien (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1995). Kep-pler's interest is in slide shows, but her points are valid for home movies as well.
20. Karl Sierek, 'Hier ist es schoen: sich sehen im Familienkino', in Christa Bluemlinger (ed. ), Sprung im Spiegel: Filmisches Wahrnehmen zwischen Fiktion und Wirklichkeit (Wien: Sonderzahl, 1990): 160.
21. Exceptions to these shortcomings include: Odin (1979);
22. Patricia Erens, 'The Galler Home Movies: A Case Study', Journal of Film and Video 38. 3-4 (1986): 15-24;
23. Chuck Kleinhans, 'My Aunt Alice's Home Movies', Journal of Film and Video 38. 3-4 (1986): 25-36;
24. Jeffrey Ruoff, 'Forty Days Across America: Kiyooka Eiichi's 1927 Travelogues', Film History 4 (1990): 237-53.
25. Cf. Stacey Johnson, 'Are We in the Movies Now?' Cinémas 8. 3 (1998): 35-48
26. and Hubert Damish, La dénivelée (Paris: Seuil, 2002).
27. For a discussion of bourgeois family ideology in relation to the viewing of movies at home, see Moya Luckett, 'Filming the Family: Home Movie Systems and the Domestication of Spectatorship', Velvet Light Trap 36 (1995): 21-32.
28. Protectionist measures introduced by the government were probably responsible for the failure of the 9. 5mm format in the US. See Ernst Wolfer, Filmen damals. . . : Beitragezur Geschichte des Amateurfilms (Wädenswil: Wolfer, 1992).
29. Vincent Pinel, 'Le salon, la chambre d'enfant et la salle de village: les formats Pathé', in Pathé: premier empire du cinéma (Paris: Editions du Centre Pompidou, 1994): 200.
30. Pathé introduced a Pathé Baby camera with interchangeable lenses in 1928, but it was very expensive in comparison with the standard model. Therefore most people worked with fixed-focus cameras 'whose lenses could [capture] everything (more or less) in focus, thanks to the modest aperture of 1:3. 5 from 1. 5' (Wolfer, 25). The interchangeable lenses made a range of ten to fifty millimetres focal length possible; a zoom lens was available from 1955.
31. For a case study of an atypical holiday film, see Alexandra Schneider, 'Autosonntag (Switzerland 1939) - A Film Safari in the Swiss Alps', Visual Anthropology 15. 1 (2002): 115-28.
32. Béla Balázs, Der sichtbare Mensch: oder die Kultur des Films (München: Hanser, 1982 [1924]): 124.
33. Italics in original. Béla Balász also stresses the democratic aspect of the unedited panorama shot. Tom Gunning, 'Before Documentary: Early Nonfiction Films and the View Aesthetic', in Daan Hertogs and Nico de Klerk (eds), Uncharted Territory: Essays on Early Nonaction Film (Amsterdam: Stichting Neder-lands Filmmuseum, 1997): 9-24.
34. According to Karin Walter, picture postcards become a common feature of tourism only with the rise of mass tourism after WWII. Picture postcards appear much earlier, however, and they also draw on previous models such as "veduta" paintings and prints which start circulating in the 18th century. Walter, Postkarte und Fotografie: Studien zur Massenbild-Produktion (Würzburg: Bayrische Blätter für Volks-kunde, 1995): 220.
35. Sierek.
36. Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Einzelheiten I: Bewusstseins-lndustrie (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1969).
37. Hermann Bausingers et al. (eds), Reisekultur: von der Pilgerfahrt zum modernen Tourismus (München: Hanser, 1987).
38. As I only know the material from a video transfer it is sometimes difficult to establish where a new 'title' begins. Shot segmentation is generally a problem in home movies, regardless of the source or the support on which the material is viewed.
39. Practical and technical aspects are also a factor explaining the scarcity of titles. Titles, for instance, involve post-production. The trade offered special title gadgets for amateurs even in the twenties and thirties - animation tables, sets of letters, graphic decorations and other patterns - but these were used mainly by club moviemakers or extremely ambitious amateurs. But home movies rarely undergo post-production. It may be that titles were felt to be old-fashioned and out of date even then, since they seldom appeared in regular cinema programmes from the early 1930s onwards. But in reductions intended for home use in particular they were still widespread. Until the introduction of video the range of films available for purchase included both silent and sound films. Watching these, home viewers remained aware of the possibilities offered by titles. Classic silent films in reduced amateur format could even be bought in the Super-8 format, which was not available until 1965.
40. The following observations are largely based on explanations in an unpublished seminar paper by Oliver Müller, 'Der Zwischentiitel im Familienfilm', Seminar für Filmwissenschaft, University of Zurich, 1998.
41. Susanne Orosz, 'Weisse Schrift auf schwarzem Grund', in Elfriede Ledig, et al. (eds), Der Stummfilm: Konstruktion und Rekonstruktion (München: Diskurs Film, 1988): 135-152;
42. Alexander Schwarz, 'Das sichtbare Wort- DerZwischentitelals'literalerSonderfall", in Der geschriebene Film (München: Diskurs Film, 1994): 83-103.
43. Ellen Strain, 'Exotic Bodies, Distant Landscapes: Touristic Viewing and Popularized Anthropology in the Nineteenth Century', Wide Angle 18. 2 (1996): 70-100.