Lives filmed from the National Family Film Archive

Summer diaries on the Sorrento coast

Summer diaries on the Sorrento coast

Family, passions, the city

Family, passions, the city

The 16mm films of an Italian-American family

The 16mm films of an Italian-American family

The diary of a sicilian journalist

The diary of a sicilian journalist

Daily life of a Bolognese family

Daily life of a Bolognese family

Fragments of a couple’s life

Fragments of a couple’s life

The project, funded by the General Directorate of Archives on the basis of special research agreements, proposes the exploration of some of the funds preserved at the National Archives of Family Films, particularly emblematic for their ability to represent certain family histories and to document social frameworks, moments of daily life, and aspects of customs and mentality of the central decades of the 20th century.

The editing and video edition were carried out using Klynt software, a platform that allows the user to consult the film funds in an innovative and interactive way, either by following their chronological succession or by constructing alternative paths through menu features. The digital video clips return a wide selection of the sequences preserved within the funds presented here and are accompanied by short texts, inserted in the titles, captions or superimposed on the images, which introduce, contextualize and give precise indications about the people, places and situations. The information was gathered through careful research and documentation work carried out in the course of cataloging each of the fonds.

Home Movies – National Family Film Archive

The National Family Film Archive, founded and managed in Bologna by the Home Movies Association, was created with the aim of saving and transmitting a hidden and inaccessible audiovisual heritage. In fact, since 2002 Home Movies has been collecting cinematographic films kept by Italian families, taking care of the real film archives they preserve. With time, the range of interest and action of Home Movies has been widened, including in the recovery activity also the audiovisual archives held by different subjects such as schools, parishes, associations, institutes, etc. The Archives thus brings to light, making it public, a hidden heritage otherwise destined for dispersion and oblivion. It includes family films, but also documentaries and fiction films, often made by skilled filmmakers, the works of experimental and independent filmmakers, scientific films, etc.. These are films that show people’s daily lives and visually document the landscape, leisure, work, travel, private moments, collective rituals, and public events. Home Movies also devotes special care to the whole series of processes that make these audiovisuals truly accessible and interpretable: through highly specialized professionals, a circumstantial work of cataloging, description and historical contextualization of the material is in fact carried out. Last updated: 09/10/2018

The preserved heritage

The National Family Film Archive is the first Italian structure dedicated to the preservation and enhancement of this very rich audiovisual heritage, unpublished, coming almost exclusively from family and non-professional contexts, until recently erroneously considered of minor importance, and now progressively rediscovered. Home Movies, moreover, is the only organization that carries out research and collection of film materials throughout the country and can guarantee the preservation of original audiovisual documents in properly equipped premises. The Archives, whose headquarters is at Istituto per la storia e le memorie del Novecento Parri E-R, holds about 20,000 items to date, almost all of them on original media: reduced-format films (8mm, super8, 16mm, 9.5mm Pathè Baby) shot mainly between the 1920s and the 1980s. Added to this is a small amount of 35mm film, and, increasingly, audiovisuals on video and audio magnetic media. This amounts to about 5,000 hours of audiovisual material from all over Italy. Materials that mainly families, but also other individuals, have kept for years in drawers, closets, attics and cellars and that contain a documentary heritage of considerable historical and social interest. The events recorded are very diverse, from the celebration of family life in all its most ritual aspects to the documentation of leisure and work activities, from public events to the transformation of the landscape. In 2011 the National Family Film Archive was declared by the “archive of particularly important historical interest” by the Archival Superintendence for Emilia Romagna. Last updated: 09/10/2018

The videos

These are the searchable videos of some of the funds held at the National Family Film Archives:

Families Without Borders – Agostino Quaranta Film Fund

Fragments of a couple’s life – Toti Dallos Film Fund

Daily life of a Bolognese family – Angelo Selleri Film Fund

Diary of a Sicilian Journalist – Nicolò La Colla Film Fund

The 16mm films of an Italian-American family – Lombardi Film Fund

Family, passions, the city – Bagni Film Fund

Summer diaries on the Sorrento coast – Cilento Film Fund