AMIA Spring 2021

The poster presentation will focus on a project derived from the master’s degree thesis I started at Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola (San Sebastian) centered on the reflection on home movies and amateur films from my country, Perú. The encounter with some Super-8 mm films from an amateur filmmaker from the Amazon and the task of digitizing them, along with another 42 orphan film reels bought in Lima by the director of MUTA International Found-Footage Film Festival, and the proliferation of online exhibitions due to the pandemic, got me the idea of creating a portal for sharing some of these moving images.     As there is no public entity, at a national or local range, that digitizes and promotes the caring for home movies, private initiatives are crucial. With the support of my school's teachers and my mentor from the AMIA DIFP,  www.cineamateurperuano.org was born. It suddenly came to my mind to turn it into a way to link existing related projects on the field. So far, it is just a platform to share home movies, plan Home Movie Days and search for new material. Some people interested or who is already working on digitization has contacted me though the site.     On one hand, the poster will point out to the problems I have found so far, but also the possibilities to make this idea grow to formalize a digital archive with a proper catalogue and easy access for the general public. I think the issues of the proliferation of people getting digital copies of their home movies by themselves and throwing the originals, the acquisition of orphan films by privates who are not thinking of these artifacts as heritage, the lack of proper equipment and the disaggregation of projects about small gauge films are common, specially, in Latin America. This will be a good opportunity to discuss on those things and, at the same time, to put peruvian amateur and home movies production on a wider scope, which is something almost unknown.