IRCHSS-funded research project: Capturing the Nation: Irish Home Movies, 1930-1970
30 Mar 2009
Made by ordinary people, families and enthusiasts all over the western world, home movies and amateur films hold a key, albeit hidden, place not only in the history of cinema, but in general in the history of culture and society. Long before video and then digital video were introduced, these films were produced on small film gauges, initially 9.5mm and 16mm (which became available in 1922-23 in the United States, and in the 1930s in Ireland), and later on the more agile and cheaper 8mm and Super8 (introduced respectively in 1932 and 1965).
Often underrated as a private and, therefore, socially irrelevant phenomenon, and equally dismissed in aesthetic terms, or at least confined to the domain of amateur pictorialism, in the 1960s the home movie became central to the personal, subjective practices of avant-garde and experimental filmmaking of New American Cinema. The practice of incorporating private home movies in experimental film and video resurfaced powerfully over the past decades, with artists such as Alan Berliner, Rea Tajiri and Daniel Reeves, among others.
Crucially, the documentary importance of amateur films became fully clear with the public release of the most complete and most viewed recording of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, filmed on 8mm by Abraham Zapruder on November 22, 1963. The socio-political impact of which private footage is potentially capable, is epitomised by further and more recent examples, such as the beating of Rodney King, videotaped in Los Angeles by bystander George Holliday on March 2, 1991, which played an important part in triggering the Los Angeles riots of 1992.
Even films that do not happen to capture significant events and historical moments, but focus instead on domestic settings, private occasions, or everyday scenes in the public sphere have become valuable documents. Through these, the customs, values, identities, practices, rituals and historical realities of generations of amateur filmmakers are preserved; as such, they are now stored in the archives of historical societies, national museums and regional collections, and screened at dedicated events and specialised film festivals. What makes them so relevant today is precisely what previously relegated them – their ephemeral, private and subjective nature. As a result of the waning of the myths of authority and objectivity as compelling social narratives, alternative, subjective and contingent accounts of reality have today become more persuasive and appealing. The proliferation of amateur videos and diaries (blogs) on the Internet testifies to the strength and intensity of the phenomenon. In parallel, the humanities have registered an ever-growing interest in self-representation, first-person narratives and practices of memorialisation that go beyond official historiography. These practices, which involve ordinary citizens and their private experience and recording of events, are indeed based on diaries, memoirs, family photographic albums and amateur footage. Home movies, therefore, are of broad interest for scholars not only in film, but also in history, sociology, human geography, ethnography and cultural studies. This interest is apparent in the panel debates at international conferences, in new publications and research projects, and in dedicated festivals. The Killruddery Silent Film Festival (13-15 March) includes this year a special screening of amateur films made in the Wicklow area.
The Irish amateur and home movie production – a significant and varied body of work which is potentially capable of deeply influencing and reshaping our understanding of private, local and public components of modern Irish history, culture and identity – is almost completely unscrutinised. Much of it has not even been catalogued, and is still in private collections dispersed over the national territory. One such collection, important but hitherto unstudied, is hosted by the Irish Film Institute in Dublin.
Funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences, the UCC-based project “Capturing the Nation: Irish Home Movies, 1930-1970” aims at cataloguing, digitising and studying such collection. Started in December 2008, and spanning two years, the project, which was granted funds of the value of €100,000, is a collaboration between a team of researchers in Film Studies at UCC, Dott. Laura Rascaroli of the Department of Italian and Dr Barry Monahan and Dr Gwenda Young of the Department of English , and senior archivists at the Irish Film Institute in Dublin – Ms Kasandra O’Connell, Head of the Irish Film Archive, and Ms Sunniva O’Flynn, Irish Film Institute Curator. Dr Ciara Chambers, who holds a PhD from the University of Ulster at Coleraine on the representation of Ireland in newsreels, 1910-1945, has been appointed to work on the project as Research Assistant.
The earliest films in the IFI collection date back to the 1930s, and were made in 16mm, a technology only available to affluent individuals and families due to its sheer expense. Indeed, a distinguishing feature of Irish amateur filmmaking is that, because of the lack of widespread economic wellbeing during the 1900s, films were not so much produced by the middle class, as by the wealthy. Amateur filmmakers comprised affluent, often Anglo-Irish families; priests, who received technical training by the Church; cinema owners, who made films of the local community and then screened them before the main feature; and members of film societies. Each group created a distinctive type of cinema, varying from recorded family events, public festivals and rituals, urban vistas, to attempts at recreating mainstream American and British genres – as well as animation, as in the case of Youghal-based filmmaker James Horgan. Indeed, the IFI includes significant footage of Munster, such as James Horgan’s “The Youghal Gazette”, as well as films entirely located in Cork, the most prominent example of which is the Uniake collection (originally on 9.5mm, but since transferred with a grant from the Heritage Council to 16mm). The introduction of the cheaper Super8 in the 1960s sparked a democratisation of amateur filmmaking and changed its socio-economic landscape. Indeed, the IFI collection is varied and includes, for instance, footage of the Beit family, a potent force in the shaping of pre- and post-independence Irish culture; but also images of, and produced by, the new emerging Irish middle classes. This project will only consider films made with small gauge, and will stop at the end of the 1970s, before the introduction of video.
The project will generate information on the scope and nature of this neglected but important collection, and it will make the collection itself fully accessible and available for further study, thus creating a national resource. Because obsolescent technology threatens preservation, hampers cataloguing and obstructs the viewing and study of the films, the material will be transferred to digital record. In parallel with the digitisation, the researchers will engage in a continuous assessment of the profile of the emerging catalogue, with the aim of producing a description of the scope and nature of the collection. Simultaneously, an in-depth analysis of selected sections of the collection will be undertaken. The project will have an international dimension as a result of a major conference that will be organised in UCC in 2010, and that will give account of both international amateur filmmaking and of the use of home movies in avant-garde audiovisual practices. The visibility of the project will also be assured by public screenings, by the production of an educational DVD, and by articles in the specialised press.
The project will engage with existing research, and deal with key issues relating to history and historiography, non-institutional practices of memorialisation, private, local and national identities, family, community, economy and institutions, rituals and tourist customs. Questions on the history, development and characteristics of amateur filmmaking in Ireland will also be at the centre of the inquiry. Ultimately, the project aims to answer the following, key question: How did the nation represent itself and performed its own self-image for the eye of private cameras?