Men with Movie Camera between 1945 and 1989. Domesticating Moving Image Technology under Communism
Men with Movie Camera between 1945 and 1989. Domesticating Moving Image Technology under Communism

Summary/Abstract: The fascination of filmmakers with children is constant ever since the first home movies from the 1900s to the user generated videos of the new media age. This study unfolds the amateur filmmaking practices of a family's two generations while, in fact, inquiring into how the filmmaking technologies of a given period (1945-1989) were built into a community's living space (both in a physical and metaphorical sense) and how they structured it. Through the history of the Haáz family living in Târgu-Mureş and the history of the local Film Club (and its leader, Ervin Schnerdarek), we can explore the periods in the symbiosis of moving image and everyday life, the changing domestication process of the medium of film and the shifting visual construction of childhood. In the meantime, attention will be paid to the impact of state regulation of amateur film collectives and equipment, on the fact that these domestication stories occured in the socialist Romania. The starting point of this analysis is that private films are not only embedded in the life of the individual, but also in the time of everyday life, in the history of representational forms and in macro contexts.

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