Journal of Film Preservation N° 56 - FIAF

Such an aesthetisization is certainly legitimate as a project of memory
and mourning (Nakamura is himself a survivor), but one should be cognizant
of the fact that it is also a depoliticization, making the event both
safe and consumable to a larger public. In this sense, the Hearst footage,
in which the ideological contradictions between image and text are more
than obvious to contemporary audiences, may actually offer more food
for thought about America’s racist past, than the home movies.
A completely different perspective on amateur films was presented by
Prof. Roger Odin from the University of Paris, who discussed home
movies as narratives of familial desire. Odin began by noting that amateur
filmmakers love the technology of cinema, i.e. film cameras are in
fact toys for the family to play with, toys which further family togetherness,
harmony, and pleasure. Everyone gets involved, either in front of
the camera or behind it. If home movies are badly done, i.e. technically
inept, this too is an aesthetic strategy, because it is the act of production
and reception which are important, not the product itself. Indeed, the
home movie’s very imperfection allows family members to « narrativize »
the film while it is being projected, making it a « family text » by relating
their individual perspectives. The ideological role of home movies, then,
is to create harmony in the family. Where Odin lost a part of his own
audience was when he insisted on a Freudian interpretation which
posited a father behind the camera, controlling the image, while the look
into the camera (against the conventions of classical Hollywood narrative)
becomes a signification of oedipal relationships between the filmmaker
and his subjects, filled with sadism and seduction. Still, Odin’s
point is well-taken that home movies are basically auteurless, that they
eschew a personal narrative, in order to allow family members to create
narrative.
One of the most interesting revelations about amateur films was that
such films could also be « art ». Some amateurs have always had artistic
ambitions, as evidenced by a host of presentations: Janet McBain
screened an extract from a charming little film, All on a Summer’s Day
(1933) which was won a prize at one of the oldest Scottish amateur film
festivals. Hisashi Okajima showed a series of astonishing, animated shorts
by Japanese amateur Shigeji Ogino, which recalled Oskar Fischinger,
German Expressionist cinema, Lotte Reiniger classical Japanese painting,
and presaged Jordon Belson and Peter Kubelka’s 1960s flicker films.
From Spain came El hombre importante (1935) by Domènec Giménez i
Botey, a highly allegorical live action film that referred to both Buñuel
and surrealism. Sara Harb from the Fundación Cinemateca del Caribe
(Columbia) screened Faustino (1950s) by Gaston Lemaitre and Luis
Mogollón, which could have been a remake of Hans Richter’s Ghosts
Before Breakfast (1928), and another outrageously self-conscious « art »
film, La Langosta Azul (1950s), directed by Alvaro Cepeda Samudio with
the participation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Finally, one of the most startling
avant-garde discoveries came from Milano, Le Cas de Monsieur
Valdemar (1934), based on a E.A. Poe short story and directed by Ubaldo
Magnaghi and Gianni Hoepli. This surrealistic film clearly belongs in the
52 Journal of Film Preservation / 56 / 1998