From Karianne and all the italian home movie day staff, a report on HMD in Gorizia, Italy:
Hi to everybody,
This year we moved to Gorizia for our fifth HMD, a nice Mitteleuropean city in Friuli Venezia Giulia at the border with Slovenia. We were there for two reasons. The first is that our HMD is a travelling hmd since
the beginning. So after Pesaro, Pratovecchio, San Gimignano, Rimini, our choice this year went to Gorizia. The second is that a couple of years ago we started with the Film restoration lab of Gorizia, part of the University of Udine, Department of cinema based in Gorizia, a collaboration to develop a project focalized on preservation of small gauge film. We’ve transferred in this Lab our pathè baby telecine, and one of us, Mirco Santi, moved there to develop the
project. Besides the University we involved also different cultural association linked to the university, among other the Association KinoAtelier to “speak” also with the slovenian part of the city, Nova Gorica (New Gorizia). The idea infact is to organize the first trans-national HMD, involving also the people who live in Nova Gorica.We started at 10 ‘o clock in the morning and it was a beautiful sunny day, so during the day we collected the film in an courtyard in the middle of the beautiful ancient building of the University.
We were a big group of people, three of us (Archivio Nazionale del Film di Famiglia), Simone Venturini, the head of the restoration lab and many students, that have received people, inspectioned and cleaned the film screened during the day and the evening. During the day, in fact, both in the morning and in the afternoon
we organized screenings for people coming from other city that weren’t able to
remain for the evening. In the morning we showed some wonderful 9,5mm film, previously transferred on video (the only time during the day we didn’t use the original film, because they were unprojectable), shot by the father of Mr Barbina, Lino Barbina, in the Thirties and early Forthies. There were in the room three of the five daughters and son of the filmmaker, all aged (70 years old). We have collected these film some months ago in Bologna and then we decided to screen them because the filmmaker came from a little village near Gorizia. And the son of the filmmaker has accompanied the projection with explanations and comments about their life in the Thirties. He was a little boy, but he remembers everything. It was very interesting. He was so excited that went in details in explanation and he did not give space to their two sisters near him, that in some moments were a bit irritaded, because also them would like to say something. One of them, the littlest girl on the film, directed to me in the dark room said: “Let him talk, it is his day, he is so excited that is impossible to stop or contradict him”.Then, during the morning, two film of Mr Mammana, an ex teacher of natural science in the secondary school that use super8 film with his students in the Seventies and in the Eighties. One of them, a sound film, was entitled “My boa snake” and was made with one of his class and especially with one of his student that was completely crazy with snakes. And talk about his boa snake, a gift of his parents, and his passion for reptiles, showing the life and habits of this kind of reptile with skill and accuracy. The teacher, that was present during the screening, told us that now his ex student is a remarkable veterinary surgeon in Gorizia. And also that he has used often the amateur film practice to teach his matters because he had experimented that was a good way to involve students actively. He will donate all his film to our archive. With him was present also an ex student of him.
Then, during the morning, Mr Peteani, the son of Ondina Peteani (the first partisan courier of Italy during the WWII) and of the journalist Gianluigi Brusadin, came with more then twenty 8mm film shot from the latest fifties until the seventies by his father. One of this, shot in 1957, was a film that shows the way the newspaper l’Unità (the newspaper of the communist party) was spread in Friuli Venezia Giulia in the middle of the Fifties. We showed it during the evening screening with other two film shot in
the sixties that showed his family during two camping holidays in Italy, in the
south of Italy.We have collected different documents about his family because he wants to realize a film on the history of his mother, using the home movies shot my his father that show her after the war and her diary.
Other people coming during the day, like Mr Venier, a man who has shot hundred film in 8mm and super8, but he has brought with him only few reels, and we have screened
them during the morning and one also in the evening without him, because he went home after the morning projections. A marriage in the early Fifities of a couple of his friends. He told us that for all his friends he has realized a film in 8mm, and it was his wedding gift. Like Olivia Pellis, a Slovenian woman, who lives in Gorizia since many years, because she has married a man of Gorizia. She started to realize film in 8mm since the Sixties. And she has a very reporting style. Some people came only to ask information, but they didn’t
bring with them their film. They will contact us in the next week to preserve their film collection.The program of the evening screening was the following:
(All the evening screenings were introduced by the filmmakers except in two cases)
Olivia Pellis: “Miramare,” shot in Trieste in the early sixties during a visit to the flower garden of the city. A wonderful flower poetry, in 8mm, sound.
Venier: “The wedding of Elide and Dino,” shot in 1959, black and white, sound.
Brusadin: “Il Friuli per l’Unità,” black and white, silent. Shot in 1957. About the delivery of the newspaper l’Unità in Friuli Venezia Giulia.
Brusadin-Peteani: “Marina di Ravenna 1962,” shot in a camping on the adriatic seaside in the nord of Italia, 8mm, color, silent. “Gargano 1964,” shot in a camping on the adriatic seaside, in the south of Italy, 8mm, color, silent.
Claudio Rossi: “Cupra Marittima 1981,” a film that shows the little sons of a young couple, with a really poetic editing, super8, sound.
Mr. Perco: “Tito pogreb – Tito’s funeral,” a film that show the funeral of Tito on the Yugoslavian TV, super8, silent.
Colarusso: A 16mm film founded in a cinecamera bought in a flee market, shot by an anonymous filmmaker during see-
skiing in the sixties, black and white, silent.After the official screenings we have furnished a little corner with a super8 projector and until 2am we have screened other super8 film on a wall that we have escluded from the evening screenings. For reason of time. A screening with only the students of the university and some friends of friends. Many surprises! Like a wonderful reel of cutting scenes from a super8 of the father of one of the students present in the room.
WORLD DAYS FOR AUDIOVISUAL HERITAGE
This year, like in 2007, we decided to organize also the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage (27 october). The difference with last year is that in 2007 we organize on 27th october an Open Day of the archive, in Bologna of course, using the same formula of the HMD. But for us was the first “HMD” in our city and in our archive. For those who don’t know, becauese of the period (second saturday of august) we did never organize HMD in Bologna, but every year in different parts of Italy. From last year we decided that we’ll go on with us travelling HMD through Italy, but we’ll “use” the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage to have a special occasion to open the film archive linked to other iniziative to awaken people to the importance to preserve home movies.
In 2007 it was a great success, so this year we started on 24th October organizing a evening screening focalized on Angelo Marzadori, a bolognese filmmaker who captured unique moment of the rebirth of Bologna after the II World War. His daughter, Paola Marzadori came to the World Day of Audiovisual Heritage last year with more then 70 8mm reels, shot by his father from 1950 to eighties. During the last year we have worked a lot on this collection involving Paola Marzadori and other relatives. Angelo Marzadori died in 1999. And on 24th we have presented the result of the work,
with the intervention of the scholar Pierre Sorlin, and showing one of the film
integral, “Bologna Democratica” shot in 1951, with the accompaniment of experimental music of Bartolomeo Saier. It was extraordinary.In the next two days, on saturday 25 and Sunday 26, we opened the archive to the public. We want to share with you our great experience in organizing this open days of the archive. For us these Days have had different meanings.
First of all it was the occasion to open for the second time (the first was last year) our film archive to our city to all the people who are interested in our film archiving activities. Through this “free access” of the archive we introduce common people to the film archive activities world’s, that usually are “private area,” forbidden to non professional people. For an archive which are engaged in the safeguarding of private film it meant much. Our work is possible only if “common people” share with us their private film and memories, only if they trust us and our way on working on their film.
And precisely for this reason that last year we decided to adhere to the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage and in this day open the archive. This year distributed on two days, 25 e 26, because on 27 october that this year was on Monday, we have organize a symposium of which I’ll tell you after. We organized conducted tours around the different spaces of the archive: bureau and cataloguing area, technical lab, catalogue access point and the conditioning area where all the film are stored.
And we have also given practise demonstrations of the activities of cleaning and inspection film and telecine. We have shown the archive in action! And this was a great way to show the archive. Many efforts but great outcomes, really! In the same time we collected during all the days, from 10am to 6pm, the film brought by people of Bologna. The Days were in fact also Home Movie Days. So we invited people to share their film with us to show some of them in the eveninig
screening. And it caused an assault, really! We didn’t stop working. We were many people, Paolo Simoni, Mirco Santi, Claudio Giapponesi, Maria Roig Alsina, Sabina Silenu, Dunja Dogo, Matteo Pasini, Roberto Benatti, Paola Pusceddu, Lucia Stefano, Francesca Morselli, Ilaria Ferretti and me (Karianne Fiorini), and we didn’t have a minute of break. More than 30 persons came with many films, other people came saying that they have film and in the following days they would bring their film (and many of these did). Most of the people decided to donate their film heritage to us.Besides collecting film during the day and organize visits in the different spaces of the archive, we have dedicated different spaces-rooms to different way to present our work: the Circo Togni Home Movies room, with the catalogue of this film collection, realized by fifteen students that have attended our course about preserving and presenting
home movies in spring 2008 (if someone is curious could see the website we realized www.memoriadelleimmagini.it/archivio, a space-room focalized on the amateur filmmaker Angelo Marzadori, a space-room dedicated to another amateur filmmaker Gaetano Carrer, a continuos screening in a big space on a big screen with different film collections, a touch screen system with a catalogue of 48 sequences divided in 4 macrocategories and 12 microcategories in each to go along the city and the people of Bologna in different situations. All the sequences are part of the film collections we have collected last year during the last World Day for Audiovisual Heritage (a selection of more than 150 hours of film). And dulcis in fundo difference performances with different artists. A dancer, Sara Gotti, that has made a choreography on the background of an home movie of the 1968. The performance was done in a courtyard of our archive with people that view the performance in a corridor looking through two windows, like they were looking in a room of an house. It was wonderful. During one of this performance was present the filmmaker and his wife, the protagonist of the film, that at the time was pregnant, and their son, now forthy years old. And they were really satisfied about this way of re-using homemovies. And on saturday 26th, in the afternoon a group of four experimental jazz musicians have accompanied some film shot in Bologna in the early sixties around the city. In the first part of the saturday evening we screened some film we collected last year on 27 october with the comments of the relatives of the filmmakers and the comments of the historian Luca Alessandrini, the director of Istituto storico Parri, the historical institute with whom we collaborate from 2005 and that gave us our actual seat.At midnight we made a screening of two film shot in the early fifties in a night-club of Bologna, l’Eden, with ballets and striptease artist shot by two different filmmakers, Mr. Baravelli and Mr. Calanchi. And the end a film shot by Nino Gatti during an osé ballet at Teatro Duse of Bologna in 1952. The three film were accompanied by two experimental musicians.
That’s a synthesis of all the long days, that culminates with the symposium on 27th October about “Private cinema: a new source for historians?”. The speakers-historians we invited were Susan Aasman (University of Groningen), Patrizia Dogliani (University of Bologna), Paolo Sorcinelli (University of Bologna), Luca Alessandrini (Historical Institute Parri), Luca Bolelli (University of Bologna).
To all the speakers we have given previously a film without any informations about them and they have analyzed the film like a source for historic research. It was the first step to involve historian in our work.
If you want to see some pictures: