Journal of Film Preservation N° 56 - FIAF

gauges in question are sub-standard. At least four general directions in
amateurism were visible in Cartagena: ethnographic/travel films, documentary,
familial « home movies », and avant-garde films. After a few
days’ proceedings, it also became clear that these genres are not mutually
exclusive, but rather intertwined: familial narratives become documents
of history, documentary images are fictionalized, all of them inscribed by
the subjectivity of their makers, by the desire of the audience.
Just how complex these varying layers of reality, fiction, and history
could be was demonstrated by the first featured speaker, Jake Homiak,
from the Human Studies Film Archives at the Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, D.C. Homiak showed three different examples of «anthropological
» footage, produced by European amateurs, looking at native,
non-white cultures and peoples. Such films, while marked by the racial
and cultural prejudices inherent in a First World view of the Third
World, often constitute the only visual record of now «lost» cultures, traditions,
and environments. As a result, as Homiak notes, these films have
become contested sites for indigenous peoples, attempting to reclaim
their history and mythology. Thus, footage filmed by a Catholic priest in
the 1930s of Native Americans on King Island in Alaska has been annotated
by native survivors, utilizing these films as a catalyst for the tribe’s
collective memory (the U.S. Government eventually forced them to relocate).
That such films indeed articulate an alternative history - in contrast
to the official government histories of the newsreels - focusing on marginalized
societies, persons, and events, was reinforced by numerous
speakers, including Roger Smither (W.W.II footage of evacuated children),
Wolfgang Klaue (Wehrmacht soldiers filming Jewish ghettos), Nico
de Klerk (amateurs in Dutch Indonesia), and others.
But these amateur documentaries offer more than « history from the bottom
». They are also articulations of a culture’s mythology and its desire,
especially when manipulated ex post facto. This was demonstrated by
Homiak when he showed a film by a Filipino-American filmmaker, who
utilizes extremely heterogeneous anthropological footage from the
Philippines to construct a completely fictional narrative of his grandfather,
who was supposedly abducted to the United States. This writer ventures
to guess that 95% of the audience of sophisticated archivists was
completely duped into believing that his narrative was « truthful », that
these amateur images and sound-track presented an empirical reality.
This question came up the next morning, when a panel from the
Japanese-American Museum in Los Angeles and UCLA screened
Something Strong Within (1995, Bob Nakamura) and introduced a CD-
Rom, both of which make use of amateur films, shot by Japanese-
Americans interned in concentration camps by the American government
during World War II. While the panellists argued that these films visualized
a « lost », unofficial history that was more truthful than the Hearst
newsreel of the same event, because they refrained from manipulating
history and film, « allowing the people to speak for themselves », this
reviewer noted that their reworking of images with music aestheticized
history, turning these historical home movies into an aesthetic object.
51 Journal of Film Preservation / 56 / 1998
Du grenier: archivage du film amateur.
Même si on veut prendre le cinéma amateur
au sérieux - écrit l’auteur - on se heurte à
des problèmes insurmontables: 1) il semble y
avoir tellement de ces films, 2) même si on
accepte de constituer une collection, il ne
semble pas y avoir de bons moyens de
cataloguer ces pièces de celluloïd souvent
sans titres, sans génériques, non identifiées,
et par conséquent sans possibilité d’être
intégrées dans l’archive, 3) il y a tous ces
petits méchants formats - 8mm, S-8,
9.5mm, 16mm, 17.5mm, 22mm, 28mm -
qui requièrent des appareils de lecture
reconstitués. Finalement il subsiste aussi la
crainte qu’il n’y ait pas de spectateurs pour
ces films, pas plus qu’il n’y aurait de
méthodologie adéquate pour les
programmer.
Ces problèmes étant mentionnés, il était
possible de les oublier et d’espérer qu’ils
n’existent plus. C’est le défi que la FPFC et
la FIAF ont décidé de relever en organisant
le Symposium de Cartagena de Indias. Dans
son article, Chris Horak nous invite à
revivre les meilleurs moments du symposium
ainsi que les principaux sujets présentés par
les orateurs.
Fuera del desván: archivar el cine
amateur
Aunque se quisiera tomar el ciné amateur
en serio - escribe el autor - se enfrenta uno
con grandes obstáculos : 1) hay gran
cantidad de este tipo de películas, 2) aunque
se acepten colecciones, parecería no haber
medios adequados para catalogar tantos
fragmentos de celluloïde, a menudo sin
títulos, sin identificación y, por consiguiente,
sin posiblidades de ser integrados en el
archivo, 3) ... además están todos esos
malditos formatos - 8mm, S-8, 9.5mm,
16mm, 17.5mm, 22mm, 28mm - que
requieren aparatos de lectura reconstituidos.
Finalamente, subsiste también la sospecha
de que no hay público para esos filmes,
como tampoco hay una metodología para
programarlos. Felizmente, una vez
mencionados, estos problemas se pierden en
la esperanza de que ya no existen... Es, al
menos, el desafio que decidió aceptar la
FPFC y la FIAF al organizar el Symposium
de Cartagena de Indias. En su artículo,
Chris Horak nos invita a revivir los mejores
momentos y los principales enfoques
abordados por los oradores del simposio.