I found Private Century beautiful and thought-provoking, not to mention an interesting contrast to Alan Berliner's 1986 collage film, Family Album. I looked at both of them in quick succession recently, having assigned them for a course on "home movies as history," and was glad I had. In both examples, the source footage lends a distinct veneer of nostalgia, of historicity--but Berliner deploys it (along with a patchwork of what he calls "authentic family audio recordings," although the meaning of authenticity in this context is not clear--and as Andy hints in his comment, a viewer's assumption of, or home movies' implication of, authenticity is a manipulable quality) in a universalist essay on human life cycles. I certainly found Sikl's work to be much more specific, and much more evocative of a particular time and place, not to mention particular (and personally identified) individuals--but as a viewer, I recall being keenly suspicious of its cohesiveness, continuity, and lack of fragmentation and lacunae. They tended to make me wonder how much of it really was authentic, and how much had been manipulated...or whether Sikl had really just hit on a mother lode of home movie material that presented a pretty complete picture, and his masterful editing just filled the minor cracks. I kept looking for evidence that the source material was actually from several different families (who happened to be similar in appearance, class, composition, etc.), which was a bit distracting. Berliner's work is quite discernibly a collage of different visual and audio source material, and presents a narrative that's kaleidoscopic, but still linear. These images and voices were easier for me to take at face value in this context--some faces and features recurred, but I was more comfortable watching the whole and not trying to pick apart the components here. In many ways these two projects are emblematic of how differently home movies have been/are being approached as objects of study, as raw material for derivative works, or as sources of data. My personal feeling is that the apparent guilelessness of home movies or amateur footage can be really deceptive, and that's something not every viewer is alert to. I think the brouhaha in 2006 over the use of re-enactments in documentaries speaks to that point--and the debate about using fake footage in docs continues--what we really still lack is a consensus view on the politics of home movie re-use. We might need to have a good down-and-dirty, between-public-intellectuals fight about that one of these days!

I enjoyed reading these postings. As with all historical texts, reading the subjective narratives of amateur footage needs care. It opens window upon private past moments. They come to us now with the subjectivities of that moment. It does not make them less valid but we simply can’t generalise about the private worlds of the past. Their versions of the past remain private points of view. Their visual details remain partial, incomplete, and inscribed with the perspectives of their maker. Lots of personal variables affected each cine enthusiast’s reputation and identity and how he or she choose, gained access to and dealt with different material. In another’s hands, these visual stories would be different. How people engaged with films in the past is speculative unless we can track down people who may remember watching films long ago (and then we enter another linked realm of remembering and forgetting). But there are aspects of past interpretation we can consider. Take for instance watching locally made amateur films in a community hall. People attended because possibly they knew either the filmmaker or people and places featured in the film. They were possibly pupils or parents of pupils, friends, neighbours or colleagues or in some other way. That relationship influenced how they watched and listened. When amateur footage moves into contemporary public settings, even at local level, viewing is framed differently as those earlier terms of reference no longer exist. Local places and events become alternative connecting threads between past and present. Remembering who was in charge of the cine camera is as important in reading the visual evidence at community level as it is in making sense of those captured by the ethnographic or late colonial cinematic gaze. Even if we can’t recover intentions with certainty we can at least be more awareness of positionality and context. Clearly amateur footage must not be used as a source of undifferentiated archive footage. Just as the family and local historian explore the micro-details of historical experience against a wider backdrop, amateur cine practice includes creative individual acts of cultural curation by self-appointed keepers of visual memories.