Department of Film, Photography, and Media

The title is referencing Hans Belting’s differentiation between image and medium: “images resemble nomads in the sense that they take residence in one medium after another” (Belting 2005. 310). This paper tries to build a methodolgical framework for the research of the nomadic behaviour of home imagery in the new media age. While the practice of home movies was theorised in the age of the celluloid film and nuclear family, the refinement of these approaches occurred at the beginning of the 1990s, with the emergence of video technology. However, the literature of the new media reported the turning point-like changes of the habitus of amateur films: the home movie is just one of the amateur filmmaking habitus, neither more typical, nor more representative than any other practices. The technological, social, and cultural dimensions of the previous ritualised practice need to be rethought in this context. How have the content, status, and functions of the home movies regarded as places of memory changed in the age of presentist do-it-yourself media products? The paper argues that home movies and videos should be regarded as historical sources of the participative culture.

The semantics of the term home movie incorporates in itself the questions raised by the context as a relevant factor in defining this movie type. The paper discusses what roles can be assigned by the different theories/analyses to context in defining home movies, to what extent is this an inherent part of the notion of ‘home movie’ and it also presents relevant cases/contexts. Based on Richard Chalfen’s two basic types of contexts of home visual media: the private and the public, in my paper I analyze contexts that represent two paradigms of the evidentiary status and production of meaning: the “what did they look like” and “open window” attitude and the “how they looked at” paradigm. One of the most characteristic situations for home videos, a primary context is when the people producing and watching the movie is one and the same. In this approach home movies show an affiliation to autobiographic texts. When used as an attribute of feature films or embedded in different contexts the term home video bears different meanings which I discuss in the analysis of feature films.

Within the strategies built upon the intentional weakening of the diegetic efficiency a group apart is formed by those films which try to reach this gesture of destruction by resorting to the diegetically weaker, in this sense pre-discursive way of expression of the silent cinema. In this paper the author analyze two films from this perspective: Guy Maddin’s Careful (1992) and Esteban Sapir’s La Antena (2007).
The plot of these films coupled with the effect achieved by the mimicry of the silent film challenges interpretation. What are the discursive functions in the contemporary cinema of the silent film-like formal principles and techniques weakening the diegetic effect, such as the absence of the synchronized sound and the use of the intertitles in the film? The hypothesis is, that the turning to the visual style of the silent film is associated with the problematization of the medial relationship between image and text, image and voice respectively, and is manifested both at the level of the fable and in the use of the filmic techniques.

The fascination of filmmakers with children is constant ever since the first home movies from the 1900’s to the user generated videos of the new media age. This study unfolds the amateur filmmaking practices of a family’s two generations while, in fact, inquiring into how the filmmaking technologies of a given period (1945-1989) were built into a community’s living space (both in a physical and metaphorical sense) and how they structured it. Through the history of the Haáz family living in Târgu-Mureş and the history of the local Film Club (and its leader, Ervin Schnedarek), we can explore the periods in the symbiosis of moving image and everyday life, the changing domestication process of the medium of film, and the shifting visual construction of childhood. In the meantime attention will be paid to the impact of state regulation of amateur film collectives and equipment, on the fact that these domestication stories occurred in the socialist Romania. The starting point of this analysis is that private films are not only embedded in the life of the individual, but also in the time of everyday life, in the history of representational forms and in macro contexts.

The author presents methodological concept devoted to studies of home movies. She combines in an original way broad range of discourses. For example she utilizes André Gaudreault’s and Philippe Marion’s studies on the genealogy of media, the concept of intermediality, media convergence, theory of remediation and researches on media domestication. This medium-focused perspective convincingly links together social and technological history – studies on “the history of the media-shaping man and the user-shaping media”.

Amateur filmmaking wasn’t a widespread practice in the socialist Romania, and the few relics of it remained unnoticed, are hidden in the private lives and homes of the former cineastes. Research has to work with fragments of films, pieces of obsolete technology, and interviews, stories about amateur filmmaking. The starting point of this paper is that amateur films are not only embedded in the life of the individual, but also in the time of everyday life, in the history of representational forms and in macro contexts. Through the stories of amateur filmmakers from Transylvania and the history of the workers syndicate Film Club from Târgu-Mureş, we can explore the periods in the symbiosis of moving image and everyday life, the changing domestication process of the medium of film. In the meantime attention will be paid to the impact of state regulation of amateur film collectives and equipment, on the fact that these domestication stories occurred in the socialist Romania.

A talált képek, talált filmfelvételek újrahasznosításának etnográfiai/antropológiai potenciálja van, annak ellenére, hogy ezekből a képekből hiányzik a kutató tekintete, a résztvevő megfigyelő jelenléte, ami szavatolná a felvételek valószerűségét a közvetlenség, a véletlenszerűség alakzatai által. A talált felvételek esetében sokkal jobban feltűnik a „csinálmány”, a képek megkonstruáltsága, míg a terepnapló-szerűen rögzített dokumentumfilmek képeinek stílusa ezzel szemben csalóka áttetszőséget sugall. Épp emiatt a kettős diszkurzivitás miatt lehetnek érdekesek a felvételeket újrahasznosító dokumentumfilmek, hiszen a képeken látható valóságtöredékeken túl arra is rálátásunk lehet, hogy a képeket milyen diskurzusok formálták. Az előadás ezt a fajta reflexivitást vizsgálja meg Kelet-Európai dokumentumfilmekben (Decreţeii [Florin Iepan, 2005], Autobiografia lui Nicolae Ceauşescu [Andrei Ujică, 2010], Budepest Retro I-II. (Papp Gábor Zsigmond, 2002-2004], Hear My Cry, One Day in People's Poland [Maciej Drygas, 2006], Once in the XXth Century, Into the Unknown [Deimantas Narkevicius, 2004, 2009]), amelyek felvételek újrahasznosítása által próbálják a kommunista múltat vizuálisan újraértelmezni, és implicit módon a képek értelmezhetőségének a határait is kérdőre vonni.

The majority of home movies contain pictures of people, they are filmic human portraits, and – to use Hans Beltings terms – they are a medium of the body (Belting 2005). The family films portray human figures and faces whose realism is further enhanced by the fact that the pictures themselves are in motion. According to Belting: “images live from the paradox of the presence of an absence. When absent bodies become visible, they use a vicarious visibility. (…) Images are present in their media, but they perform an absence which they make visible. Animation means that we open the opacity of a medium for the transmission of images” (2005, 312–313). If the medium of the moving picture functions as a kind of artificial body, in which the images of the family members got animated, then perhaps it would be interesting to examine how this animation is related to the portraiture of the person depicted in the picture and to the direction of his/her look. It is common knowledge that most of the home movies are focused on children, on child life within a family, one might say the myth of childhood is attached to home visual media.
Concordantly early cinema is bound with the image of children as well, especially when the demonstration of the medium specificity is at stake (the most famous example is the Lumière brothers 1985 film Repas de bébé, which was part of the first public film screening). The image of the child thus represents, or to use Hans Belting terms: produces the visual excess that is embodied in the medium of the moving images. Departing from these references I will examine the representation of children in a Transylvanian home movie collection from the 1930’s.

Ever since the emergence of the first technologies destined for amateur filmmakers, the most frequently recorded portraits in home movies have been children’s. This article analyses the characteristics of children’s portraiture in home movies, with
special attention to their on-camera performance. Home movies can be seen as records of children’s bodily interaction with the filmic apparatus and, at the same time, with the media literacy of their filmmaker-parents. he everyday scenes of
children performing awareness or non-awareness in front of the camera are dissected in this paper from a media-historical point of view: the analysis of a Transylvanian home movie collection is embedded in a discourse on media practices, on
mediality and on processes that transform everyday reality into a corporeal image.
The idiosyncrasies of the first Transylvanian home movies are incorporated in a discussion about early 20th century visual culture, in the context of which childhood gets to be constructed as an amateur moving image.

SUMMARY
The Genealogy of Home Movies.
Transylvanian Amateur Media Practices from Photography to New Media

Private film makers continue the line of the ancient cultural activity of observation, recording and contemplation: „home movies, also known as amateur films or private films are the continuation of the tradition of the bourgeois family portrait gallery, in former times painted, and from the last century recorded on photographs” (Forgács 1995. 109–111). The quote condenses the approach of this book. Péter Forgács in his essayistic writing formulates the idea, which had become the cornerstone of contemporary theories of media practices and media culture: new media build on older ones, that is to say, they function as a kind of media history archive and carry in themselves their own genealogy. In this conceptual framework picture usage at the beginning of the 20th century is connected to picture usage at the beginning of the 21st century: since the superimposition of media is not a new phenomenon, it offers a theoretical framework in which picture-making practices that are far from each other in time can be interpreted in their historicity. However, the term private film or home movie, gradually becoming out-dated, draws attention on the changing demands of media users towards pictures in the new media age, and the changing social conventions of media practices.
The first chapters of the book provide an overview of contemporary approaches to the historicity of media. By mapping out the different approaches, methodological aims are defined. Media genealogy has elaborated an interpretative model for grasping the processes of media history. The genealogy of the increasingly familiar (home) movie can also be relevant in theorizing the dissemination and the chameleon-like aspect of media. The theory of remediation also models the interdependence of media within the framework of communication theory. Remediation can be relevant from the viewpoint of home movies/videos especially when it reflects on the relation between media and reality: all mediation is real (not a simulation) and the end-products are real as artifacts. We can also examine remediation as a social phenomenon with historically changing aspects (see media genealogy). A medium can mediate not only images and other media, but – as a part of reality – it also mediates certain norms and decisions made and written into its material by other people. If we focus on the meanings of the moving image within the space and reality of home, the domestication of objects and technologies can also be relevant. The researchers of media domestication study the way in which different information and communication technologies become part of households: why family members choose a certain technology, how they harmonize it with their everyday environment and habits and what kind of power structures, task distributions and rites appear as a consequence. Looking at the various research directions presented above this analysis considers media genealogy to be a theoretical framework which can hold together the collected data and films. Domestication, remediation, intermediality are concepts and at the same time media historical and social perspectives which can further refine the reflection on the practice of home movie making.
The theoretical conclusions are followed by the in-depth analysis of three Transylvanian home movie collections from the following perspectives: the genealogy of the family and family life, the media practices of the family, the content and the structural, formal aspects of the collections and the habits of preserving them. This segment results in a chronological series of data from which the specific historical periods can be unfolded together with the analysis of technology – family – everyday life – home movie/video. In this case the focus is on the practice of the respective family embedded into the context of everyday life. It is examined the way in which technologies of film-making became part of and structured a community’s life (both in a physical and metaphorical sense) in a given period. What kind of identities did families construct for the media they used, what sort of media practices characterized their everyday life in a given period of social history? How did home movies/videos connect people in the process of making, watching and archiving them?
In the films we can decipher the stories and the periods of paying attention to each other, as well as the scenes of familial life. To put it more concretely: we can follow the story of the father observing his children (in a further research one could examine how this turns into the story of the observing mother). More rarely the lens of the camera is directed towards the generation of the film-maker’s parents. It seems that children represent a different social order, and for this reason they are regarded as photographic and filmic themes in different periods. At the same time we can witness how film-making becomes part of parental duties and how the recording of childhood becomes a social requirement.
Media are objects and consolidated human relations at the same time. Consequently, the home movie/video can be not only a film but also an object, it can mirror the symbiosis with media technologies, it can connect the intimate sphere and the formal frameworks of our everyday life and it can be about friendship, motherhood, fatherhood, community life and genealogies.

lására). Végül annak vizsgálata következik, hogy a négy családi lmgyűjteményben a kamerának szegezett tekintetek, mozdulatok hogyan leplezik le a mozgóképpel való találkozást és a médiumspeci kusságról 180 való gondolkodás történetét. 7.1. Nézni a nézőt: a keretből kifelé néző arc elméletei "Nincs jelentősebb tekintet egy fotón, mint a kép alanyának tekintete"-állapítja meg Catherine Lutz és Jane Collins a National Geographic folyóiratban illusztrációként közölt fotóknak a statisztikai analízise alapján. 181 Mary Ann Doane a kameratekintetet kifejezetten a mozgóképes gurativitás alapjának tekinti: "egy tekintet roncsolása/szétesése fatális hatású a mozira nézve. A torinói lepel lenyomatából felbukkanó guráció visszafordításának minősülhet". 182 A tekintet frontalitásával és a frontális képkompozíciókkal foglalkozó kutatások egyöntetűen azt sugallják, hogy a képek néző felé fordulása lényeges módon kapcsolódik a képek létezéséhez/természetéhez/ontológiájához (l. Kenaan 2011. 143).

The amateur and private filmmaking practice during the socialist years in Romania (1945–1989) didn’t become an extensively researched field, although the history of the non-professional use of the medium of film can disclose the intricate relationship between the socialist reality and the medium, but also between the totalitarian cultural project and the possibilities of the individuals living in its confines. The purpose of this is paper twofold: to delineate the history of amateur filmmaking in pre-1989 Romania, and to put under scrutiny the methodological possibilities and pitfalls of an endeavour like this.

A 19. században felbukkanó fotografikus kép használatának a terjedése Kolozsvárt sem kerülte el, az Osztrák–Magyar Monarchia városaival egyidőben jelentek meg a városban a fotóstúdiók, a városról készült képeslapok grafikáit fényképek váltották fel, és a Kolozsváron olvasható lapok is közöltek már illusztrációként fotókat az 1890-es évek végén. Ezek közül talán a fotóstúdiók, a hivatásos fényképészek történetéről született a legtöbb tanulmány. A fényképészet erdélyi történetéről írt karriertörténetek, monográfiák  és tanulmányok kevésbé foglalkoznak a fénykép és társadalom kapcsolatával, vagy a vizualitás kultúrájának témakörével, és az 1918 utáni időszak az erdélyi fényképezés történetének vakfoltja marad. Jelen tanulmány a várostörténeti kutatások és a mediális kultúratudomány érdeklődési pontjait hasznosítva szeretné vizsgálni a két világháború közötti erdélyi vizuális kultúrát, a fényképezés médiumának hétköznapivá válását, a nem hivatásos fényképészek és a fényképhasználók vizuális műveltségének mintázatait. Mindez egy kolozsvári polgár, Orbán Lajos fényképeinek történetén keresztül válik majd láthatóvá.

This article examines how sensual aspects of the moving image, such as visual errors, blurring and technical disturbances are employed in found footage films dealing with Eastern European socialist past and the regime changing events. In the selected films Eastern European socialist visual culture is reworked with the cinematic practices of the post-media age in order to shape the spectators' historical consciousness. By deliberate reframing and intensifying the medium-specific noises of the archival sources, or by an artificially created visual precariousness a new type of spectatorial awareness is created. The article delineates four different strategies through which the mediality of the recycled archival footage is brought to the fore and made operational (engaging the senses of its viewers). 1

Keywords: Eastern Europe, non-fiction film, photography, Anca Damian, Vladislava Plančíková, Radu Jude.
There is a tendency in recent non-fiction film to re-contextualise archival photographs in highly mediated environments. In films like Crulic. The Path to Beyond (Anca Damian, 2011) photographs are
embedded in highly abstract, animated worlds, while in Felvidék. Caught in Between (Vladislava Plančíková, 2014) photos appear in an avantgarde montage. At the other extreme is Radu Jude’s
Dead Nation (2017) which presents a series of photographs in a cinematic context to paradoxically demonstrate the lack of images of the Romanian Holocaust. The selected Eastern European nonfiction works build ‘remembrance environments’ around photographs, they compile, juxtapose, structure photographs within the medium of film: they carry out this sequentially through montage, or form a multimedia collage within the confines of a single frame. The paper carries out the analysis from the perspective of intermediality, as these films open up new possibilities for the medium of photography, redefining through cinema (or the cinematic) the complex relationship between photography and history, or the indexical trace and history in general. In this analysis intermedial relations are addressed using the phenomenological approach to images developed by George Didi-Hubermann and László Tarnay.

Tanulmányom a videókészítésnek és -vetítésnek egy olyan esetét mutatja be, amelyik egy újfajta rálátást nyújthat az 1989-as rendszerváltást megelőző és követő évtized mentalitására Gyergyószentmiklós és Székelyudvarhely térségében. Az 1980-as években három római katolikus pap megtakarított pénzéből közösen vásárolt egy JVC videókamerát, amelyet felváltva használtak. Ezzel egyidőben filmek, rajzfilmek VHS másolatát is beszerezték belföldi és külföldi forrásokból egyaránt. A saját készítésű videókat és a filmek videómásolatát egy ugyancsak kalandosan beszerzett színes televízióban vetítették a hittanteremben vagy a helyi adón egy igencsak népes, érdeklődő közönségnek. A felvételek kordokumentumként is érdekesek lehetnek, hiszen a 30 évvel ezelőtti ünnepnapokba, közösségi eseményekbe nyerhetünk betekintést, azonban a tanulmány az képanyagot mégis inkább médiumtörténeti, mint helytörténeti jelentősége felől közelíti meg, hiszen a videó médiumának ez a sajátos használata rávilágít arra, hogy a technika, a videókép, a filmkészítés mint lehetőség milyen jelentőséggel bírt a rendszerváltás körüli évek erdélyi társadalmában. Az elemzés három kérdés érint: a videó médiumának az 1980-as és az 1990-es években kialakult lokális jelentéseit vizsgálja az amatőr keskenyfilmformátumok és a házi videó társadalmi jelentésének az összehasonlításával. Másodsorban szemügyre veszi azokat a társadalmi kapcsolatokat és kommunikációs formákat, amelyeket a videótechnika beszerzése és társas használata végett létesítettek. A tanulmány harmadik részében a fennmaradt VHS-hagyaték tartalmáról esik szó, amelyek ugyancsak társadalmi igényeknek megfelelően alakultak.

There is a tendency in recent nonfiction film to recontextualise archival photographs in creative ways. In films like Felvidék. Caught In-Between (Vladislava Plančíková, 2014) photographs are part of a collage work, while films like Crulic. The Path to Beyond (Anca Damian, 2011) use photographs in animated environments. At the other extreme is Radu Jude's Dead Nation (2017) presenting a series of photographs as a film that paradoxically demonstrates the lack of images of the Romanian Holocaust. These films open up new possibilities for the medium of photography, redefining through cinema the complex relationship between photography/the indexical trace and history. This chapter builds upon the phenomenological approach to images by George Didi-Hubermann and László Tarnay in order to discuss intermedial relations of nonfiction films and to present what the photographic image means in the post-media age documentary.

Keywords:  intermediality, documentary, archival photographs, index, photofilmic, George Didi-Hubermann, paradox visibility, haptic vision, collage

The amateur and private filmmaking practice during the socialist years in Romania (1945–1989) didn’t become an extensively researched field, although the history of the non-professional use of the medium of film can disclose the intricate relationship between the socialist reality and the medium, but also between the totalitarian cultural project and the possibilities of the individuals living in its confines. The purpose of this is paper twofold: to delineate the history of amateur filmmaking in pre-1989 Romania, and to put under scrutiny the methodological possibilities and pitfalls of an endeavour like this. The researcher of amateur films in a post-socialist country might encounter wide-ranging difficulties, such as the absence of audiovisual archives or of institutionalized image collections and the lack of technologies to produce a proper digital transfer of the analogue documents; sometimes the researcher has to acknowledge that large amounts of films have been thrown to garb...