Skip to main content

What are the INPUTS?

Context – EU Mission “Smarts Cities”

Recent discussions on Smart Cities have increasingly highlighted the limitations of purely data-driven approaches, emphasising the importance of social, cultural, and historical dimensions of urban life. At the same time, citizen archives and participatory heritage initiatives have emerged as valuable tools for preserving local memory and engaging communities.

In parallel, artistic research has gained recognition as a method for exploring complex societal challenges, including urban sustainability and social cohesion. However, the integration of audiovisual heritage—especially amateur and family film archives—into urban research and policy prototyping remains relatively underexplored.

This project positions itself at the intersection of these fields by combining citizen-generated audiovisual archives, artistic research methodologies, and urban sustainability discourse, aiming to contribute a novel, practice-based perspective.

Similar initiatives and projects

The following initiatives are considered as relevant for this project proposal:

Family Films/ Home Movies – Main Bibliography

  • Aasman, S. (2019). Everyday complexities and contradictions in contemporary amateur practice. In A. Motrescu-Mayes & S. Aasman (Eds.), Amateur media and participatory cultures: Film, video and digital media (pp. 44–64). Routledge.

  • Aasman, S., Fickers, A., & Wachelder, J. C. M. (Eds.). (2018). Materializing memories: Dispositifs, generations, amateurs. Bloomsbury Academic.

  • Aasman, S., van der Heijden, T., & Slootweg, T. (2021). Amateurism: Exploring its multiple meanings in the age of film, video, and digital media. In G. Balbi, N. Ribeiro, V. Schafer, & C. Schwarzenegger (Eds.), Digital roots: Historicizing media and communication concepts of the digital age (Vol. 4, pp. 245–265). De Gruyter Oldenbourg.

    https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110740202-014

  • Craven, I. (Ed.). (2009). Movies on home ground: Explorations in amateur cinema. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

  • Cuevas, E. (2010). La casa abierta: El cine doméstico y sus reciclajes contemporáneos. Ocho y Medio, Libros de Cine / Ayuntamiento de Madrid.

  • Cuevas, E. (2013). Home movies as personal archives in autobiographical documentaries. Studies in Documentary Film, 17(1), 17–29.

  • Cuevas, E. (2014). Change of scale: Home movies as microhistory in documentary films. In L. Rascaroli, G. Young, & B. Monahan (Eds.), Amateur filmmaking: The home movie, the archive, the web (pp. 139–151). Bloomsbury Academic.

  • Cuevas, E., Rius, N. F., & Fibla Gutiérrez, E. (2024). De la casa al museo: Comisariar y exhibir cine doméstico y amateur [From the home to the museum: Curating and exhibiting home movies and amateur films]. Comparative Cinema, 12(23), 122–135.

    https://doi.org/10.31009/cc.2024.v12.i23.08

  • Ishizuka, K. L., & Zimmermann, P. R. (Eds.). (2008). Mining the home movie: Excavations in histories and memories. University of California Press.

  • Motrescu-Mayes, A., & Aasman, S. (2019). Amateur media and participatory cultures: Film, video, and digital media. Routledge.

  • Odin, R. (2014). The home movie and the space of communication. In L. Rascaroli, G. Young, & B. Monahan (Eds.), Amateur filmmaking: The home movie, the archive, the web (pp. 15–27). Bloomsbury Academic.

  • Rascaroli, L., Young, G., & Monahan, B. (Eds.). (2014). Amateur filmmaking: The home movie, the archive, the web. Bloomsbury Academic.

  • Salazkina, M., & Fibla-Gutierrez, E. (2018). Introduction: Toward a global history of amateur film practices and institutions. Film History, 30(1), i–xxiii.

    https://doi.org/10.2979/filmhistory.30.1.01

  • Sapeta Dias, I. (2025). Um cinema sem nome (Caderno N.º 6). ESAD.CR-IPL.

  • Zimmermann, P. R. (1995). Reel families: A social history of amateur film. Indiana University Press.