M.A. Tabea Söregi

Dissertation Project:

In-between frames: The Making of the Family Home Movie and its meaning today (working title)

A birthday party – a child blowing out candles – cut – opening presents – cut – a family vacation in Croatia – cut – swimming in the sea – cut – travelling back by car – the end: the ciné-movies, which include formats like Super-8 or 16mm films that were famously used by amateur-movie makers, seem eerily similar in the collection “Steiermark privat” (engl.: Styria private). They focus is often on the family and their activities in and around their home. Birthdays, Holidays, Christmas, catholic events, family gatherings. But do we get the whole story by simply viewing these amateur-movies as a documentation of reality or are there other stories to be seen and told? What kind of Styrian privacy is constituted through the movies and the collection itself?

In my research I am assessing the current socio-political context of the collection by posing the following questions: Who is seen as a part of an “Austrian audio-visual cultural heritage” and what kind of historical context and themes of the movies are used to highlight a white, upper-middle class, catholic Styrian household. At the same time, I want to explore what is left out in the discussions about the collection, so that something other than the family home movie – something between the frames – can be analyzed. This dissertation will be an interplay between past and present. With this approach I aim at enmeshing the state of the collection with its historical connections while at the same time focusing on its discontinuities and what is in-between the frames.

Supervisors: Univ.-Prof. Dr.habil. Katharina Eisch-Angus