The Home Movie 4.0: (co)creative strategies for a tacit, embodied and affective reading of the Sicilian home movie archive Ruxandra Lupu Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of Media and Communication August 2020 1 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. © 2020 The University of Leeds and Ruxandra Lupu The right of Ruxandra Lupu to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. 2 To the two filmmakers in my life, my father Aurel and my husband Alfredo. To you both I owe my obsession with home movies and the inspiration that made this project possible. Acknowledgements Colin Needham, the donor of my scholarship, without whom this project would not have been possible. Simon Popple, for acting as my primary supervisor, offering me such valuable guidance on archives and community engagement methods and always encouraging me to push the boundaries of my research towards unchartered territories. Paul Cooke, for acting as my secondary supervisor, asking all those difficult questions and dedicating such a large amount of time reading through all the drafts of my thesis. Giorgia Aiello for acting as a third supervisor and giving me such valuable advice for navigating the vast semiotic space of the home movie. Jenna Ng for acting as the external examiner and creating an excellent opportunity for me to showcase the project. Beth Johnson, for acting as the internal examiner and providing her precious support and insight in relation to my project. Daniele Wecker for our lively and passionate discussions about home movies and the hidden universe behind these cultural assets. All colleagues within the School of Media and Communication at the University of Leeds, for creating such a supportive and inspirational working environment. My Romanian and Sicilian families who have put up with all my travels, with the boxes of reels that continued to reach my home and with my obsession with home movies. Alberto Diana, Giulia Savorani, Sara Fgaier, Martina Melilli, Luca Ferri, Ilaria Fraioli, Fabio Scacchioli, Giuseppe Spina, Salvo Cuccia, Giuseppe Boccassini and Loreno Garzella, for granting me access to their creative universe and offering such valuable insight into the power of artistic practice. Jack Liga (Liga family), Rob Niosi (Niosi family), Angelo Lentini (Lentini family) and Steven Guccione (Guccione family) for granting me permission to work with their family’s home movie material and supporting my research by agreeing to engage in eye-opening discussions about their family’s heritage. Home Movie Bologna and Filmoteca di Palermo for granting me access to their home movie collections. 3 ABSTRACT The home movie has always been a borderline film category that breaks with cinematic standards and occupies a liminal position between the artistic and non-artistic domain. The very nature of these films has rendered traditional analytical frames such as film analysis, ethnographic investigation and participatory practices not only hard to apply, but also ineffectual for opening their meaning to a public made of specialist and non-specialist audiences. Sicilian home movies in particular constitute an underexplored yet rich field of enquiry. In my project, I deal with Sicilian home movies and the way we can reimagine their role as social objects in an increasingly digital context. The aim of the project is to find new methods and forms of expression that make these films more relatable. Bergson’s concept of actualization provides a suitable theoretical frame for conceptualizing new ways of looking at and engaging with these archives. Using this frame, I develop a practice-led approach that deploys creative interventions such as drawing, ethnographic interventions and participatory exercises, as tools materialising this broader vision. This gives rise to an iterative process that explores practice against theory and theory against practice and creates new constructs dealing with the tacit, sensuous and affective in these archives. These modalities challenge traditional methods by asking if and how we can produce a different and disembodied way of knowing the archive that is deeply rooted in lived experience. They also give rise to looser ways of investigation that render aesthetic experience more inclusive and participative. The novel methodology with its associated reading modalities and the interactive documentary offering a different way of engaging with Sicilian archives, have been collated into the project website www.homemoviesicily.com. They can benefit both researchers, artists and communities of non-specialist audiences. Furthermore, the project opens up two future research directions. The first looks at how we could take tools like the interactive documentary into the mainstream. The second envisages how creative exercises can give rise to further interaction modalities. Both directions represent a modest but important step for the future of these archives. 4 5 Table of Contents ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................................................... 4 CHAPTER 1 Introduction. ............................................................................................................................... 8 CHAPTER 2 Framing the Sicilian home movie archive. .................................................................................. 18 CHAPTER 3. .................................................................................................................................................. 24 A methodological approach to actualizing the archive .................................................................................. 24 3.1 Practicing actualizations of the home movie ............................................................................................ 27 3.2 Actualizing home movie practices ............................................................................................................. 30 3.3 From imagination to imaginative methodologies ..................................................................................... 34 CHAPTER 4 Methodology. ............................................................................................................................ 39 4.1 Impact and originality of the method ....................................................................................................... 39 4.2 Research plan ............................................................................................................................................ 41 4.3 The gestural in the Sicilian Home Movie ................................................................................................... 45 4.4 Novel modalities of reading the Sicilian Home Movie ............................................................................... 52 4.4.1 Tacit modality .................................................................................................................................... 52 4.4.2 Embodied modality ........................................................................................................................... 53 4.4.3 Affective modality ............................................................................................................................. 54 CHAPTER 5. .................................................................................................................................................. 56 What my hands Know: guidelines to a non-verbal reading of the Sicilian archive or THE TACIT MODALITY ... 56 5.1 Looking for the third meaning in Sicilian home movies ............................................................................. 58 5.2 The invisible space of the gestural in drawing .......................................................................................... 62 5.3 Surfaces of contact .................................................................................................................................... 64 5.4 Conclusions ................................................................................................................................................ 70 CHAPTER 6. .................................................................................................................................................. 72 What my body Knows: an ethnographic staging of the Sicilian home movie or THE EMBODIED MODALITY .. 72 6.1 Between the body and embodiment, senses and the sensible .................................................................. 75 6.2 Sonic landscapes ....................................................................................................................................... 78 6.3 Somatic postcards ..................................................................................................................................... 83 6.3 Conclusions ................................................................................................................................................ 88 CHAPTER 7. .................................................................................................................................................