Within the documentary cinema festival UlassaiFilmFest, a project is included for rediscovering the local non-professional cinema and bring it out, all this developed (under the name of “Paesaggi di Famiglia”) through the following steps: Research, Digitalization and Filing. Why must we give importance to non-professional cinema? It represents a very important documental source around the links between History and territory, thus achieving the role of an upholder of public memory, otherwise destinated to be lost. The Super 8 spools and similar ones, in fact, are no more considered by historians as mere cinematographic practices for exclusively private purposes, but as fresh and unpublished historical witnesses, able to give us a direct documentation over complete portions of society, mirrors of culture to analise how society sees itself, and wonderful documents of local life (Roger Odin, 1995). Family cinema thus becomes a privileged witness to ask for a truthful interpretation of public history and for the comprehension of a certain cultural background Home Movies help us in fact to understand the various social and ideological dynamics, environmental and urban space changes, the role of the public space, the development of new communities in the area, the tension

between old and new, tradition and change, and they have room both in the postwar period, and in the years of the economic boom and the development of the Country. “Paesaggi di famiglia” is a project for recovering memory, through the collection of non-professional movies in 8 mm, super8, 9.5 mm and 16 mm formats, the following cataloguing, filing and distribution. This project mainly look at cineastes, enthusiasts and amateur film makers, over the years exposing a film with the memories and important moments of their lives and their country, and telling in a particularly intimate way the big moments in history as well: not only baptisms, weddings, holidays, but also many steps in the environmental, urban, custom change, that they could witness. The project developes in a first stage of collection, through a previous research of home movies made most of all in the area of Ulassai and Ogliastra, then in a second stage of indexing and restoration, and the final digitalization and filing.

Nicola Contini

 

Paesaggi di Famiglia website