Home movie-making and Swiss expatriate identities in the 1920s and 1930s

Abstract

' D ie ganze Schweiz in Feststimmung ...' All Switzerland en fete this was the slogan Kodak chose for the Zurcherlllustrierte in June 1931 to advertise their Cine-Kodak, a 16mm clockwork camera for home movies. The first amateur cameras and projectors had been launched in Europe and the US in the early twenties. There had been earlier experiments with home cinema equipment. At least 70 different cameras were developed in the US alone in the 'pioneering phase' of amateur filmmaking from 1895 to 1923. But the substantial breakthrough was not made until 1923, when formats were standardised and reversal safety film stock was introduced. Pathe's 9.5mm and Kodak's 16mm formats both came on the market that year. Kodak added the more reasonably priced regular 8mm film stock in 1932, and this largely replaced 16mm film in the home movie field after the Second World War.2 'All Switzerland en fete' catches the feel of the wholesome home movie world, a modern middleclass idyll, free of worries and problems, all joy and happiness. Early home movies (i.e. self-made films intended for domestic viewing) were largely specimens of the comedie bourgeoise. Film clubs specifically for workers had sprung up even during the first amateur film movement in the twenties and thirties, but it was largely the middle-classes who owned cameras and captured themselves on film. They were the 'happy few' who could afford this treat. But factors other than money helped to decide who bought film equipment and who didn't. One of the requirements was a sense of belonging to a particular family, linked with a need to assert one's own social status. Examining the surviving Swiss home movies of the twenties and thirties shows something else as well: a significant number of the films still in existence were made by Swiss expatriate families. Using three families' privately owned collections of motion pictures, I investigate how these Swiss expats made use of narrow-gauge film equipment. Swiss family G. lived in Genoa, Italy, 1928-1938 and left a collection of 177 'Pathe Baby' 9.5mm cartridges, of which 122 are home movies shot by family members; 55 films were purchased from the Pathe Baby Filmatheque. The second family, F., emigrated to the American state of New Jersey in the 1920s. They shot some seven hours of 16mm (and later Super 8) between 1927 and 1970, about half of which predates from WWII. The T. family lived in different places in Japan, and shot 14 reels (almost five hours) of 16mm film during 1928-30. Home movie-making as a cultural practice can be understood through the analysis of specific films