Paper Short Abstract:

The planed contribution explores new modes of looking hat amateur movies by tying them to their emotional as well as material levels and by taking the relationship between the Austrian Movie Archive and the Database, where these movies are stored, into account.

Paper Abstract:

My research focuses on the Austrian Movie Archive and its vast collection of Amateur Movies. The Amateur Movie collection “Styria private” in itself counts more than 30.000 movies. Such a large collection often conveys to the viewer a sense of familiarity and cohesiveness.

The seemingly familiarity and cohesiveness of amateur movies is constructed through the common usage of scenes like birthdays, holidays, weddings and so on. Since the amateur movie was always closely tied to the genre of the family movie, the Austrian Movie Archive implied this association by using a specific data bank that squeezes the amateur movies in a clean-cut home movie genre without room for ambiguity and making amateur movies as a part of a genre. The databank is also a guiding point for the users of the archive. You are first made familiar with the data bank which contains various points of interest like significant historical events in contrast to the repetitive themes of the movies. But the seemingly mundane movies can establish relationships to the viewers as well by evoking emotions and memories. But rather than trying to paint a whole picture of the movies, which I would suggest is not even possible, I want to explore new perspectives.