Introduction

The contemporary age is marked by a radical transformation of the modes of recording and transmitting one's memories – both within the public and private spheres. ‘Family films’ are a product of the private sphere, and are part of the broader universe of amateur filmmaking, which began in the mid-1920s, and has steadily developed since, also in Italy as a result of the introduction of non-professional and lighter filming equipment. Moreover, as an amateur audiovisual practice it has developed, since its inception, its own codes, styles and an altogether alternative and autonomous language, in juxtaposition to institutionalised practices of conventional cinema. Amateur films have mainly portrayed marginal and atypical subject matter, which are oriented towards and influenced by personal interests, by domestic and social contexts to which the amateur cineaste belonged.

Roger Odin – the French scholar who first theorised amateur cinema – explains the specificity of family films (‘home movies’) as follows: ‘By family films I mean films made by a member of the family about characters, events, or objects that are, in one way or another, linked to this family's history, and which are made for the privileged use of those family members’. Family films are in fact chiefly made by a person who works alone and is therefore responsible for shooting, photography and oftentimes soundtrack and editing, and whose modes of consumption are far removed from conventional commercial circuits. It should also be noted that since its inception, recurring themes have emerged from this cine-amateuresque form of filmmaking: the filming of children, wives, parents, pets, home parties, private ceremonies, family trips, the product of which is characterised by spontaneity, freshness, naturalness, but also by the absence of technical and stylistic precision, the mal fait (badly/amateurly executed) according to Odin's own definition. What is of primary interest is to reaffirm the sense of cohesion of the family nucleus, rather than to retell the everyday life of the same in any poetic or artistic way.

One key feature of the genre is that these films act as a sort of repository of cultural and personal, memory. Anyone who makes a private film – the filming of surrounding people, places and objects – in some important way gives expression to their own memories.