The one thing we know for certain about home movies in university and state archives is that they are not, in any sense of the word, at “home.” But where are they? How do we classify them? How do these films change when they become wards of the state?
Elvira Pouw and Julia Noordegraaf (in abstentia due to illness), from the University of Amsterdam, and Orphans veteran Nico de Klerk, from the Netherlands Film Museum, posed some answers for these questions through the screening of a number of home movies made in the Dutch East Indies (now part of Indonesia).
Noordegraaf argued in her paper (which was read by Pouw) that amateur film as a term is no longer sufficient to describe the wide range of material that archivists may want to consider. Instead, she suggested the use of “amateur moving image materials,” or “amateur media” to include video and digital material.
Today, as Noordegraaf noted, television news programs no longer apologize for “amateur footage,” as the line between professional and amateur footage narrows. Nonetheless, there remains key differences between home movies when they’re screened at home and when they’re placed into an archive. She suggested that the line between amateur and professional, and public and private was never clear-cut, and these lines blur even further when films are screened for audiences that were not anticipated when the films were made. Archives can help contextualize amateur media even as it loses its immediate participatory meaning within the family home.
In her companion piece, Elvira Pouw used the case study of films by the Sander family to raise a problem related to the classification of amateur media and proposed a possible solution. She argued that amateur film has typically been classified as either family film, with images of domestic spaces, or as hobby film, with images of domestic and non-domestic spaces that are shot to look as professionally as possible.
But the Sanders film screened, which featured the wedding of their cook, is not a family film, as it does not show their immediate family. The film is also not made with professional shooting in mind, and thus can not be considered a hobby film either. Pouw argued that films of this nature should be considered “extended family films,” offering a new category of amateur media.
Nico de Klerk, who has now attended all six Orphans, presented films made by a wealthy ethnically Chinese family living in the Dutch East Indies. Where many people have focused on the value amateur films may have for other disciplines, such as history, de Klerk suggested that this value may be minimal. We may learn more by applying the work of other disciplines to the study of amateur film.
Nico de Klerk & Leonard Kamerling
Citing an article from a sociological journal, de Klerk suggested that the debate about whether observation affects people’s actions may be useful for the study of amateur film. One camp argues that being filmed has a marginal effect on film subjects. People often act as they normally would in home movies, and quickly forget that they are being observed by a camera. The other camp suggests that the presence of the camera distorts social situations, producing interactions and moments that might not otherwise occur, such as posing for the camera.
In the end, de Klerk suggests that the real distortion takes place at our viewing of home movies. These films were often produced under carefree conditions, but when they are seen now in academic settings (like at Orphans) they are treated much differently.