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private cinema and history: a questionnaire and you have some answers

As you know, November 10 last year in Bologna was held a meeting on private cinema and history, organized by Parri and Home Movies.
The meeting was interesting and full of ideas, and showed that, although slowly, even in Italy research on family films and their use in (and the) story begins to have a solid foundation.
In the months before the organizers had sent a group of historians careful use of images in research and teaching in a questionnaire on private films: discussion of the game 10 is precisely those questions than answers.
I think anyone who follows this blog might be interested to read both and I decided, therefore, begin to publish them. Are many and the answers (of course only publish my own) are not always synthetic. So I will post one at a time. With us for a bit 'of time, and I hope they are interesting reading. Andrea Sangiovanni

Question 1
National Film Archives of Family contains over 2,500 hours of home movies and amateur Italian shot from the twenties to the eighties of last century, films from all over Italy. Film crops in many cases through archiving projects in some areas to document mainly local memory. What use could be proposed for the historic research, education and communication / dissemination of this historic audiovisual documentation?
It requires the historian to introduce, in general, their experience in the use of audiovisual and, if any, of the amateur movies.
Answer
believe that research, teaching and communication and dissemination of history can only benefit from the use of audiovisual materials, road, moreover, is now widely accepted and followed in terms of methodology, in daily practice by many historians .
Regarding the use of home movies and family members are involved since 2004 in a project entitled Audiovisual Archives of Memory Abruzzese, created by the Department of Contemporary History of the Faculty of Communication Sciences University Teramo and supervised by Guido Crainz. The activity of the archive is in two different but complementary paths:
1) research, analysis and classification of family films that are studied as a source for contemporary history: This location has given rise to a doctoral thesis (Abruzzo between history and memory. The story and film images of family Annacarla Valerian) and some articles, including the one I published in "Contemporary" (No. 3, July 2008, a. XI) entitled The story in Super8. The "movies" family as historical sources.
2) The use of family and amateur film as a tool for telling the story: This led to the creation of short films that explore - at the same time - the power of family films as narrative material to illustrate the intersection of family stories (and local) with the national history, and the different forms that can be taken to tell history (and stories) by these means (we went from a more traditional didactic form of historical documentary to get to the documentary evidence and cross images).

Question 2
The film is a family and amateur audiovisual document, to be cataloged and stored, and thus become accessible, it needs a research and contextualization which consists mainly of historical document analysis and information gathering related to it, through the recognition of places and events taken, the context in which it was produced through interviews and questionnaires to cineamatore and / or family members. What role can the historian in this important process, where the first result should be a precise description of the document? E 'possible to think of operational convergence between historians and archivists? (...)
Answer
I think the question itself contains the answer: the role of the historian is obviously important in the study of materials and absolutely convergent with the work of archivists. However, it seems to me
that limit the historical analysis of family movies and amateur at this moment that we could define exegesis of the source is likely to be limiting: Throughout this phase, although essential, is only preliminary - in my view - an analysis and, even Moreover, to the use of historical film family.
Surely, however, the phase of cataloging the material is full of problems that require serious reflection not only on the tools to use for cataloging but also on the forms that the rating itself can take: and to solve these problems is needed joint work of historians and archivists.

you again in a few days with more questions and answers.
AS