blos jani men with moving camera site

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Title: “Men with the Movie Camera between 1945 and 1989. Domesticating Moving Image

Technology under Communism”

Author:

Melinda

Blos‐

Jáni

How to cite this article: Blos‐ Jáni, Melinda. 2013. “Men with the Movie Camera between 1945 and 1989.

Domesticating Moving Image Technology under Communism”. Martor 18: 77‐92.

Published by: Editura MARTOR (MARTOR Publishing House), Muzeul Ță ranului Român (The

Museum of the Romanian Peasant)

URL: http://martor.muzeultaranuluiroman.ro/archive/revista‐martor‐nr‐18‐din‐2013/

Martor (The Museum of the Romanian Peasant Anthropology Review) is a peer‐reviewed academic journal

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eginning at the end of the 19th century,the media of photography and film alsoallowed for everyday people to record

their own stories. The purpose of this paper isto touch upon the significance of the mediapractices of the people who were engaged inusing and domesticating moving images in theperiod between 1945 and 1989 in Transylva-nia. During this process not only amateur

filmmaking technology changed and ideas of childhood shifted: but gradually the norms of parenthood and childrearing were effectedand childhood became cinematized.

Private films develop a symbiotic relation-ship with their living-space: this is thestarting-point of my analysis of amateur film-making practices (and of the social network created by them) in regard to the differentgenerations of a specific family, the Haáz fam-ily – their example may provide an anthropo-

logical perspective of the changes concerning

the Romanian media landscape in the 1960sand the 1980s, respectively 1. Among the col-lections of home movies pertaining to fami-lies, I discovered a type of source that can helpus investigate the history of both the media-shaping man and the user-shaping media.

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The contemporary discourses of mediahistory and theory emphasize that, contrary totechnical determinism, media history and the-ory have been shaped by social needs. In thispremise the history of technology and mediacannot be separated from social history. Re-searchers tackling historical and theoreticalquestions, are in fact social historians, and at

the same time anthropologists of media prac-tices who also explore the specific knowledge

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Me&$(da B&*0#Já($ Melinda Blos-Jáni is an assistant professor at the Cinematography, Photography and Media Department, Sapientia - Hungarian University of Transylvania.

STR CT

The fascination of filmmakers with children is constant ever since the firsthome movies from the 1900’s to the user generated videos of the new mediaage. This study unfolds the amateur filmmaking practices of a family’s two gen-erations while, in fact, inquiring into how the filmmaking technologies of agiven period (1945-1989) were built into a community’s living space (both in aphysical and metaphorical sense) and how they structured it. Through the his-

tory of the Haáz family living in Târgu-Mureş and the history of the local FilmClub (and its leader, Ervin Schnedarek), we can explore the periods in the sym-biosis of moving image and everyday life, the changing domestication processof the medium of film, and the shifting visual construction of childhood. In themeantime attention will be paid to the impact of state regulation of amateurfilm collectives and equipment, on the fact that these domestication stories oc-curred in the socialist Romania. The starting point of this analysis is that privatefilms are not only embedded in the life of the individual, but also in the time of everyday life, in the history of representational forms and in macro contexts.

KEYWORDS

amateur film, home movie, mediadomestication, media practice, mediaidentity, film club.

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connected to media history and theory. In thispaper I wish to follow this line of inquiry andexamine what kind of media histories are out-lined and what kind of media theories are re-

vealed by everyday practices as compared tothe big media histories and theories.

It is challenging to examine what can bedeciphered from home movies or private films,namely from the practice of mediation of everyday life, about those life-worlds that be-come observable in these films and throughthese films. Many generations have grown upwith camera lenses pointed at them, and, fromtime to time, various amounts of photographsand films got accumulated throughout theirlives. These private photographs and films haveboth reflected and influenced lifestyles, rela-tionships, modalities of paying-attention-to-each-other, the culture of remembrance,identity, and culture of visual and material ob-

jects. As Heather Norris Nicholson puts it:“only with changes in parental attitudes andcamera technologies have children begun topicture themselves. […] When family films de-pict the spaces and places occupied by chil-

dren, they expose aspects of current thinkingabout parenting, play and childhood experi-ence. Since children cannot be insulated fromthe cultural politics of everyday life, their cin-ematic representation is part of the wider cir-culation of meaning, even if only shown tofamily and friends” (Norris Nicholson 2001:130).

The practice of home filmmaking is alsostructured by individual motivations, while at

the same time the family community filters andintegrates, in accordance with its own value

preferences, the history of the conventions of home filmmaking. Thus they subordinate theirpractices to functions which belong to otherfamily communities as well, regardless of envi-ronment and class (Moran 2002: 56). Filmmak-

ing is not merely a technological means usedin a private context in communicative situa-tions by the members of a ‘speech community’(Hymes 1967)2; instead, this practice must berethought as a mutual effect of technological3,social, and cultural determinations, as a “limi-nal space in which practitioners may exploreand negotiate the competing demands of theirpublic, communal and private, personal iden-tities” (Moran 2002: 60). Therefore, if one un-

derstands the practice of home filmmaking asa habitus, then the question of how and whatis worth presenting in a home movie must begiven multiple solutions: the dominant ideolo-gies influencing the practice of home filmmak-ing, the changing family institutions4 andlife-worlds, and the history of amateur record-ing must be analysed together. James Moranlends an entire chapter for theorising conven-tions and technologies the latter in which hetreats home movie-making as a separate habi-tus within amateur filmmaking. He describesthe habitus (and not the films) by its culturalfunctions: representation of daily life; place of creation of public, community, and individualidentities; manifestation of the continuity of generations, which outlines the home as an af-fective and cognitive space, and which yields anarrative framework for family and personalhistories (2002: 59–63).

Ethnologists and anthropologists know

that one cannot study a single segment of a cul-ture without being familiar with the whole sys-tem of relationships within that culture. In thecase of home movies, the way to representthese relationships is through a medium-con-cept, which does not make a hierarchical dis-tinction between the history of the mediumand its socio-cultural analysis. Through thismedium-concept we can unfold a complex sys-tem of relationships. This is because family

movies represent not only life’s easily recognis-able scenes, but from the right angle we may

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see these as parts of a complex and intricatesystem of relationships, the offshoots of whichlead us to the discovery of new life-worlds.Paraphrasing Susan Sontag’s well knownphrase about photography: “to collect photo-

graphs is to collect the world” (Sontag 1977:3).

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How does the medium shape the life of theindividual or the society? When posing thisquestion one has to consider that the mediumdoes not convey only images but it can also

convey as part of reality certain norms and de-cisions recorded and written by other people.At the same time, mediums are objects and so-lidified human relationships as well, that is,they convey human relationships, as sociolo-gists of knowledge suggest5. The study of fam-ily movies may uncover histories of humanrelationships.

Home movies by definition are as distinctfrom the use of moving images in institutions

such as the cinema, as they are parts andshapers of family home space. If we want tofind out the meaning of moving images thathas developed in family home space and real-ity, we will find the domestication of objectsand technologies relevant, too. The researchersof media domestication study the process inwhich information and communication tech-nologies become part of the intimate space of the home and household: what the reasons arebehind the purchase of certain technologiesand what ways they tuned in to the home en-

vironment and woven into the fabric of every-day life. What kind of power relations do they create? As Roger Silverstone puts it, the inter-action of humans and technologies has conse-quences for both sides: „wild animals then,wild technologies now, what’s the difference?In both cases, unconstrained, they pose threatsand challenges. In both cases, brought withinthe fold, they become sources of power and

sustenance. Domestication is practice. It in- volves human agency. It requires effort and

culture, and it leaves nothing as it is” (Silver-stone 2006: 231).

Domestication, therefore, is a processwhere man and technology meet, thus, mak-ing many ‘things’ part of the home life: appli-

ances, ideas, values, and information. Similarto the theory of social representations that in-

vestigates the ways in which formalizedknowledge becomes informal, the theory of domestication links up the macro- and micro-levels of society 6. We can distinguish betweentwo tactics of domestication: in a household,technology undergoes a process of objectifica-tion, becoming a part of the group of objectsand creating a space for itself. At the same

time, it is incorporated into the network of human relationships and the temporal dimen-sion of family life (Silverstone 2006: 234–235).Therefore, upon acquisition, the meaning of technology is transformed, it becomes part of the material and the symbolic sphere of ourhomes7. In the case of communication tech-nologies8, these transformations are multi-plied, as the act of mediation – which canagain create contact between the private andpublic spheres – also needs to be considered.

The starting point of the theory of domes-tication is that ‘taming’ technologies implies aseries of synchronizations: technical, cultural,

Men with the Movie Camera between 1945 and 1989. Domesticating Moving Image Technology under Communism

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economic, and social. Relevant references alsoclaim that the handling of these technologieshas its own genealogy 9: new devices are em-bedded into the already existing family or pro-fessional practices and routines (Rieffel 2008.

215). What type of realities and media prac-tices is moving image technology shaped to?How is a technology discovered, and what iscuriosity driven by? What are their stories of accessibility and acquisition? How does a cer-tain device become personal and familiar?How have the changing technologies of mov-ing images shaped the private use and the con-cept of media? It is the concept of domestication that may help us get closer to the

context of home movies, and enter into a con- versation about its use, the everyday routines,and its embedded nature at the level of the fam-ily micro-communities (without discussing thecontent or the style of the films).

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While a review of the history of amateur

film technology is not the objective of thispaper, we need to know what technologies ap-peared and became accessible for the masses atdifferent times to be able to place individualcases into a larger context. The appearance of new technologies is inseparable from the his-tory of the constitution of media: we may in-

vestigate the way in which moving imagesbecame a medium of family communication ora part of the participative culture (the process

of democratisation).The private use of photographic image

technology can be traced back to the begin-nings of film history: the first examples arethose one-minute long early films, the subjectof was family life and which had as protago-nists members of the Lumière family. Never-

theless, the large-scale spread of amateurtechnologies is due to the Kodak camera (CineKodak) and projector (Kodascope Projector)launched in 1923 by George Eastman10. As thisformat was in reality a modification of 35 mmfilms, the procedure of developing was identi-cal with that of the larger format, and this iswhy the end-product was very expensive. Inorder to reduce filming costs, in 1932 the CineKodak Eight technology was developed which

only filmed on one side of the 16 mm filmstrip, thus allowing for recording on a reel(which was later cut in two) two times as many images. In 1965 the Super 8 technology was de-

veloped; it still allowed only 3 minutes of recording with a speed of 24 frames/second,but its use was easier and it allowed for imagesof better quality (later the replacement and de-

velopment of the film strip was simplifiedthrough a cassettes; the perforations becamesmaller, as well, leaving a larger surface for im-ages and, later on, for sound). For soundrecording even more expensive technology andmaterials had to be procured, this is why medi-ums with both image and sound strips did notgain much popularity. The recording of soundwas carried out by a separate instrument on amagnetic strip, therefore synchronized play-back was difficult, and this is why silent record-ings were more typical.

The first video equipment and the various

versions of magnetic tapes appeared in the

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1960s but they only gained popularity later,when the cheaper VHS (video home system)tapes appeared and when VHS players weredomesticated on a large scale. The first videotechnology destined for amateurs, Betamovie

BMC-100, was developed in 1983 by Sony. Itweighed 2.5 kg. Later on lighter and smallercameras were developed with the appearanceof Video8 and Hi8 cassettes. The era of digitalformats was the next level of technical devel-opment; however, I do not intend to touchupon this matter as it falls outside the relevantperiod of the scope of this study.

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Ethnographic research can approach a fac-tual story and the long-term structures fromthe perspective of event- and individual-ori-ented stories (suggest: from the perspective of individual stories and events. Relying on theinterviews and films, we have an overall per-ception of how the ‘big’ processes ‘come alive’.

Reconstructed from the various practices, thismoving-image-history comes near the view of micro-historiography. This is a media history plan, the structure of which is determined notonly by the pace of technological changes butalso by its habituses and its social and culturalembeddedness11 as well. After all, the ebb andflow in the history of the habitus might takedifferent turns: family events, everyday life,local happenings, social expectations, andother media can also act as formative powers.Therefore, periodization should start with datacollection, specifically, the description of thecontext surrounding the collections that comefrom the era of the people’s power: the social-ism. This method of separating the periodsdoes not strive after drawing the outlines butinstead, it may be compared to an operationof hatching.

Gábor Gyáni theorizes the sphere of valid-ity concerning the research of micro-worlds:

he considers the linking of micro- and

macrostructures within the various narrativedisciplines a fundamental problem of investi-gating everyday life. Given the topic andmethodology of the paper, we need to reflecton the constantly recurring epistemological

question of ‘what does the local and the partic-ular viewed in its diversity stand for?’ (Gyáni1997: 152). Carrying out discourse analyses aswell as showing the power structures wouldresult in a sort of a critique of the 20th century

visual system, on the one part, and it wouldopen the door to the periodization of scopicregimes, on the other. Notwithstanding, theethnographic method of interviewing impliesour belief in the subjectively constructed

world, and after all, this exploration of sourcesfits into a kind of a tradition connected to phe-nomenology and to the sociology of knowl-edge12. Therefore, I will view the researchmaterial made up of interviews and homemovies (collected between 2007-2011), first of all, as the exploration of the local and the indi-

vidual that is capable of mediation towardslife-worlds, the everyday life, and ‘biggerprocesses’. Upon investigating the context of the individual events, I could mostly identify

with the cognitive activity that Gábor Gyánidescribed as follows: ‘in fact, historians try torepeat a journey by train – taking all the pointsand exploring all of its side-tracks – they neverexperienced in person’ (1997: 154).

The present study is an attempt at unfold-ing the amateur filmmaking practices of afamily’s two generations while, in fact inquir-ing into how the filmmaking technologies of


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ler Folk Ensemble [Állami Székely NépiEgyüttes], then under formation. In 1957, theensemble had already appeared on stage underhis guidance. As a dance instructor and chore-ographer, he also took part in expeditions,

where he used the ensemble’s film camera torecord the different dances. He worked until1962 as an activist in the dance movement, butin 1964, due to cartilage problems in his knee,he went on to work as a drawing-teacher indifferent schools in Târgu Mureş. After his re-tirement in 1975, he published a number of studies on folk art and dance movement (seeBalogh 1991), and he was presented with sev-eral lifetime achievement awards. As a public

employee, he could barely make ends meet,but he always tried to maintain his bourgeoisheritage. A fine example would be the bour-geois home culture combined with rustic ele-ments, which also had a great influence on hissuccessors. He died at the age of 95, in 2007.

The members of the second generationwere born at the dawn of the socialist regime:they had different careers as demonstratedmostly by their attitudes towards the govern-ment in power. Two of them chose to live

within the confines of the regime: while Sán-dor Jr.15 became a music teacher and a chil-dren's choir organizer (Children'sPhilharmonic Orchestra of Vlăhiţa) and hasbeen living in Odorheiu Secuiesc. Juditremained in Târgu Mureş with her family andhas been working as an engineer. Ferenc is anengineer with a degree in applied arts, whoemigrated to Hungary in 1979; Katalin be-came an architect, who fled abroad in 1987,

and after living in several countries, she finally settled down in Germany. Three of the foursiblings came into contact with filmmakingthroughout their career: Sándor Jr., Ferenc,and Katalin. (My study focuses mostly on Sán-dor Jr., who became an amateur filmmaker insocialist Romania.)

The twelve children of the third genera-tion were born and socialized in the country chosen as a residence by the members of thesecond generation. They also got into touchwith amateur filmmaking in the 1990s; never-

theless, this study does not include their pres-entation since they belong to another era of social and media history.

As for the family, they still function as onelarge entity despite the dispersal of the second

generation. The relatives play the role of thesignificant other who confirms the reality andevents of everyday life. This brings about thestrengthening of the ‘large family’s’ structurewhose primary function is to make private lifepublic within the boundaries of intimacy (Habermas 1999: 43–51). This sense of be-longing to each other is maintained throughfamily reunions and the communicative use of new media platforms.

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The tradition of drawing is stronger thanfilmmaking in the Haáz family. Sándor HaázSr.’s father, Rezső Haáz (1883–1958) was notmerely professionally motivated in drawinghis pictures (as a drawing-teacher; ethno-

graphic illustrations) but he also favoured thismedium whenever it came to recording hisfamily; the family photographs were taken by his friend, István Kováts Sr. However, thedrawings and paintings were made from pho-tographs as we can also learn from the exhibi-tion catalogue about the Kováts photography


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Studio (Fogarasi 2007: 47–48). Sándor HaázSen. preferred to use the photographic mediumin documenting his private life. He sorted hisphotographs into albums, adding dates andcaptions. He was capable of recalling all the

pictures in his album up to the smallest details.Even when he was elderly and had poor vision,he would still ask his family members to look up some pages in the photo album and then,based on their description, he would recall thegiven picture and the story behind it. After hisretirement in 1975, he kept a diary until 2002:he filled a whole copybook with his writingseach year. At the beginning, his sole purposewas to keep a record of his expenses, but over

time, his entries also included notes about hisgrandchildren, family members, and certainevents.

He started to delve into photography as adance researcher in the 1960s when the filmcamera also became his working tool, which heborrowed to use as a choreographer of the na-tional dance ensemble until 1962. Based on thememoirs of his son, he used several types of movie cameras: ‘We knew what cine camerastood for; we had already seen such a Russian

type, spring-driven, wind-up 16mm cine cam-era. Then he was given a 2x8 camera, too. Asfar as I can remember, the first apparatus was anormal 8mm camera, made in Russia, of course, just like the films, and this is what heused for shooting at the beginning of the sixtieswhile he was with the dance ensemble’ (Sándor

Haáz Jr.). For the purpose of a slow-motionplayback and an easier studying of the dancemoves, the films for the dance ensemble weretaken at a speed of 64 frames/second. The for-mer dance choreographer could not really have

been well-versed in the field of movie cameratechnology as the films of his children were notshot with the standard speed settings: insteadof 16-24 frames/second, he used the dance-recording’s speed of 64 frames/second. He took so-called slow-motion pictures, thus wasting alot of raw material for an everyday scene fromthe daily game sessions of his children16. Pre-sumably, he recorded the family scene on nor-mal 8mm footage (left over from a dance

shooting) during the summer holidays whilethe institution did not make use of the equip-ment. He must have kept his filming of thefamily secret from the institution as the filmwas not developed until many years later – they could not let it get into a state laboratory to-gether with the dance-related recordings.

Filmmaking, as such, gained more groundin the life of the next generation. The story of the four siblings, who all settled down in dif-ferent places, is all the more interesting because

it gives us a picture not only of their voluntary filmmaking which later became embedded intheir realities, but they also inform us of the so-cial and ideological contexts that influencedthe habitus of filmmaking, as well as, the medialandscape that the personal living spaces be-come part of. In other words, as cinematictechnologies and the media become part of thereality, so the individual’s reality changes. De-liberately or not, we all become part of the

media landscape and are implicitly faced withcertain ideologies which structure our reality,that either make it accessible or simply excludeus from the institutions of representations. Itso happened that while Sándor Jr. (1955) wasgetting acquainted with 8mm and super-8mmfilmmaking in Târgu Mureş during the seven-ties, Ferenc (1951), following in his father’s andbrother’s footsteps, undertook filmmakingusing the same technologies in the Budapest of the eighties, and Katalin (1957) obtained a

video camera, first, in Sweden during the

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nineties, and then in Germany. While videotechnology was easily accessible in the westerncountries, in the Târgu Mureş of the seventiesand the Budapest of the eighties, the chancesof filmmaking were also a matter of people’s

social capital and tactics (namely: the ability to acquire one on the black market).

Sándor Haáz Jr. mentioned photography as an experience preceding his filmmaking: ‘Ithink taking photographs came before makingfilms in everyone’s life, and so it was in my case.’ He was on a trip abroad in 1968 when hegot his first camera from his Canadian aunt,but he was also allowed to take photos with hisfather’s Smena camera. Thanks to his hobby

and his parents’ acquaintances, the fourteen-year-old amateur photographer finally got intothe cartoonist group – announced by the artschool for its drawing students – led by ErvinSchnedarek in the (Young) Pioneers' Palace. Inthe period between 1969 and 1974, he was amember of the cartoonist section where hemade animated films compiled from action se-quences, and he would soon go on to take partin a number of contests, winning severalprizes.

Nevertheless, it was not the activities car-ried on in the pioneers’ club that kept himbusy with amateur filmmaking, but an eventmuch more important that took place in 1971:helped by Ervin Schnedarek, he developed thefilm his father had made ten years earlier: ‘In1971, a miracle happened that made me com-mit myself to motion picture film by the sideof Mr. Ervin. After all, without him and hissympathy for our childish fantasies, this film

might have been gone, or thrown away duringthe moves’ (Sándor Haáz Jr.). Encouraged by the success of the family screening, he pur-chased his own cine-projector. He bought hisfirst film camera from his savings at the age of sixteen in May 1971. It was a Russian-madeSport1 camera which used 8mm film, whichhe used until 1975. At Ervin Schnedarek’s sug-gestion, he replaced the film cameras withmore efficient and better-equipped apparatus:by 1987, he had already purchased three cam-eras in total and received one as a gift.

Buying film stock was a complicatedprocess at the beginning of the 1970s: he wasgiven some reels as a gift from his Canadianrelative (1971). He also purchased some him-self during his travels abroad (Hungary, Slova-kia) in 1973 and 1977, respectively. Hescreened his homemade films and the car-toons he had purchased during his trips (e.g.The Genesis by Jean Effel, 1958) at home andin the classroom. Thus, amateur technology made the cartoon genre accessible; communalfilm-watching and screening occasions re-placed television: ‘we barely had any televised

programmes then, and there was no other op-tion’ (Sándor Haáz Jr.). His amateur films, -consisting mostly of home movies, documen-taries about trips with his class and his mates’birthplace (mostly villages and families), butfarcical trick films as well, were developedwith the assistance of Ervin Schnedarek.

Sándor Haáz Jr. was appointed musicteacher in Vlăhiţa, Harghita County, in 1978.For a while he commuted between Târgu

Mureş and Vlăhiţa. Sándor did not stop mak-ing films: he recorded the customs and thefestivities he encountered in Vlăhiţa, the chil-dren’s choir he conducted, and his growingfamily (two of his sons were born during thisperiod). In order to do this he acquired hisown developing equipment. Besides filmmak-ing, he continued taking photographs. His sis-ter, who settled abroad, passed down a videoplayer to him in 1987, which in his commu-nity of friends proved to be even more popu-

lar than the film camera and projector, as it


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formed a true community of late-night VHS-watchers. In the early nineties, he stoppedmaking moving pictures and ever since, he hasbecome the collector and archivist of thefootage connected to his work (mostly with the

Children’s Philharmonic Orchestra). His atti-tude toward filmmaking shifted, the attractionof the communal screenings faded, and the de-

voted cine-amateur of the seventies gave upfilmmaking: ’Nowadays it would be ridiculous,or pathetic to show up in a community with acine projector. And it’s not worthwhile any-more to carry a film camera with me. No. Now there are a lot more fanatic, serious experts,who are the real filmmakers. Nowadays I don’t

even take photos anymore. Everbody takesphotographs, everybody makes films, I don’twant to take photos, just to be there, pushingmy way in the crowd, just to find a good placeto stand. Video killed moving pictures’ (Sán-dor Haáz Jr.).

To conclude: the filmmaking habitus of Sándor Haáz Jr. of the second generation wasnot shaped by the institution of family alone;the contemporary semi-professional film clubsand amateur film forums also had a great im-

pact on him. However, his filmmaking habituswas not limited to the club activities; his use of technology permeated his everyday livingspace: his family, classmates, and later on, hiswork, too. Prior to December 1989, his mediadomestication, his media practices were mostly determined by the film club and his friendship

with Ervin Schnedarek. Sándor Haáz Jr.’s atti-tude towards the medium of moving imagesalso includes these contexts and human rela-tionships, which, through his films, he relayedto his family and the classroom community. In

what follows, I will try to present the pioneers’club and the trade union film club led by ErvinSchnedarek in Târgu-Mureş, as well as theirrole in the life of the people keen on filmmak-ing.

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Ervin Schnedarek’s17 career represents thestory of the self-educated filmmaker on theroad towards becoming a professional. He wasborn into a family of eight children in 1920. Hisbrothers influenced his predilection for photo-graphic technique, mechanics, and electronics.During the Second World War, the five broth-ers were drafted – all of them made it back home. After the war, he set about constructing

a cine-projector together with one of his elderbrothers, Vilmos, who was skilled in mechan-ics. He even managed to take out a patent onit, but then the mass production failed. Projec-tion rooms and cinemas were equipped withmachines made in Russia. Consequently, therewas such an increasing demand for projection-ists and cameramen that they started a schoolwhere Ervin Schnedarek was invited to teach18

(see Buglya 2004: 6). This vocational schoolfunctioned from 1950 to 1958 and, in themeantime, Ervin Schnedarek earned hisdiploma in education at the Babeş-Bolyai Uni-

versity. After the vocational school had stoppedfunctioning, he went on to teach Physics at theArts High School in Târgu Mureş. Soon after-wards, he was transferred to the Pioneers’Palace where he was charged with leading afilm study group for school children. “His ideawas to recruit talented art school pupils for thePioneers’ Palace and start his first animation

studio. This was in 1969 and, even though I

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was not in the drawing group. So, he was look-ing for painters and graphic artists who hadthe time and disposition for such matters’(Sándor Haáz Jr.). In the Pioneers’ Palace, they produced both animated films19 and feature

films20, whose scriptwriter was ErvinSchnedarek. However, the actors and the cam-eramen came from the ranks of children.While the cartoonist group was more attendedby the Arts High School students, film-clubgoers were mostly made up of those from thescience division. Together with a few of his ac-quaintances interested in filmmaking, LászlóTörök (sub-editor of the Új Élet journal, filmcritic) and Popescu Păun (retired teacher),

they founded a film club (Cineclub)21

in 1958,and they were offered a home in The CulturalCentre of the Syndicates. In the beginning, theclub members’ activities were limited towatching films and organizing further educa-tion courses: they invited famous film criticsfrom Bucharest and borrowed the twelve top-listed films of the time from the National FilmArchives. Later on, the community of filmgo-ers retrained itself to become a self-taughtfilmmaker community, working their way upto the front line of the national amateur film-makers.

However, The Cultural Centre of the Syn-dicates did not provide full-scale support forthe film club; the acquisition of the necessary materials was either due to their skilful bene-factor, Ferenc Szélyes, or it was part of the du-ties assigned by the president of the syndicate.Making propaganda films (The Woman of Our Times) and documentary films (Stop Pol-

lution!) was their reason for maintaining theclub. On the club members’ initiative, they produced documentaries (The Two Bolyai’s,or a film on the events related to the floods inthe seventies entitled Dramatic Develop-ments), other documentary films, ethno-graphic films (The Burial of Winter inSărăţeni) as well as artistic and experimentalcreations. From 1969, the Romanian Televi-sion launched its Hungarian-language broad-

cast in which the club was allowed to screentheir films and also cooperate with them as re-

porters. By 1983, they had organized ten edi-tions of a national amateur film festival namedMureş Screen [Ecranul de Mureş] (Buglya2004: 8).

Some additional opportunities were of-

fered for the amateur filmmakers creating andcooperating under the club’s wings: they couldenter their films for national competitions andscreen them in other towns for greater audi-ences. According to the interviews, theamateur filmmakers of Târgu Mureş won theirway to the following annual or biannualfilm festivals: Hercules (Băile Herculane),Man and Production (Hunedoara), Foto-son(Timişoara), Environment Protection (Galaţi),

and Autumn at Voroneţ22

(Gura Humorului).In addition, they also took part in the arts fes-tival called Song to Romania, organized underthe aegis of the Council of Socialist Cultureand Education. The festival was held a total of seven times between 1976 and 1989 and aimedat legitimizing popular culture compared toelite culture.23 Club members were presentedwith several awards over the years. The mem-bers of the cartoonist study group participatedin the First National Cartoon Festival of Ro-manian filmmakers held in September 1975(Bacău). Among others, Sándor Haáz Jr.’s car-toons also made their way onto the big screen(The Fox and the Hedgehog, The Two Ras-cals).

The activities of the club were closeddown due to the events in December 1989;club members also documented the localevents of the revolution. From 1990 the Cul-tural Centre of the Syndicates ceased to func-

tion as a home for the club: the executivecommittee dismissed the employees of the for-mer regime and refused the club manager ac-cess to their own film library. ErvinSchnedarek had already secured some of thestock in his home, but all of the materialsstored in The Cultural Centre of the Syndi-cates were thrown away at the time of thebuilding’s renovation in 2005. Alongside hisformer students, Ervin Schnedarek launcheda private enterprise named Studio 7, whosescope of activities included wedding cine-


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matography and documentaries. He was pre-sented with two lifetime achievement awardsat the Film Festival of Lakitelek (1995) and theAlterNative International Film Festival inTârgu Mureş (2002), respectively. Several of his

students have become professionals over theyears and have been making films up to thisday.

Ervin Schnedarek and his club matesspoke about the film club as something that,apart from providing a professional-technicalenvironment, could serve as a framework forcreativity and community experience in thosetimes, regardless of age, ethnic, or social affili-ation: ‘Beginning with the very fact that we

were living in a constant psychological oppres-sion, one way or another, we had to break through the wall and find an occupation thatwould help us counterbalance the situation.This is what the film club activities were a per-fect match for, and where we could set ourimaginations free. There were a lot of things wecould accomplish and, to my mind, it was quitean exciting game to play for an adult. Count-less grown-ups and elite companies visited thefilm club. The film club was the remedy for

communism. Now, what do I mean by this? My point is that I offered them an all-out recre-ation where everyone could forget about all theideological study groups and turn to this won-derful thing, what cinematography is. So, they went there to relax, be invigorated, and be re-born’ (Ervin Schnedarek).

When trying to explain their commitmentto filmmaking and the reasons behind the willto become professionals, the interviewees al-

ways cited Ervin Schnedarek’s pedagogicalskills. The club leader’s professional expertiseand calling was the principal cohesive forcethat held film enthusiasts together. Adoptingand mastering filmmaking practices took placewithin the formal context of the club. Never-theless, it was not so much the institution thatkept the community together, but the leader’scharismatic personality. According to SándorHaáz Jr., Ervin Schnedarek’s intelligence, hu-mour, and love of the cause made it possible forthe film club in Târgu Mureş to enjoy a nation-

wide reputation in the 1970s – the three clubsrunning in Sibiu and Câmpulung, and TârguMureş were on the firmest ground.

The interviews lead us to the conclusionthat Ervin Schnedarek was a key figure of the

amateur filmmaking in Târgu Mureş not solely as a club leader; his personality was lookedupon as an institution that was ready to givegood advice and provide everyone with tech-nical equipment. Regarding the description of the era, his attitude towards technology and hisaccess to the laboratory equipment may bothbe relevant. After World War II, while he wasfulfilling his duty as the instructor of the pro-

jectionist and cameraman training, Ervin

Schnedarek, in a peculiar way, had access to themovie camera and called into play his ingenu-ity to procure the necessary film stock: ‘by means of the film school, I managed to get a 16mm camera, which was detached from an air-fighter brought down during the war. It did noteven have a viewfinder, but I could not wish formore. It went with a 15 meter long film strip,but there was no film stock at all to find afterthe war. After shooting, I would adopt a rever-sal technique and transform it into a posi-tive

picture fit for screening purposes. Someoneheard about what I was doing and paid me a

visit. This is how I made a great friend in Mr.Popescu, who got so enthusiastic about my firstresults that he put together all his money andleft for Bucharest to buy a 2x8 Zeiss-Movikonmovie camera. This made it all much easier’(Schnedarek to Buglya 2004: 5).

The former story of the film camera doesnot stand as a single case but is also sympto-

matic of those times: it speaks of the opportu-nities that presented themselves in the 1950sand 1960s. The wider context, that is to say, thefunctioning of the regime may be caught on thehop through these tactics adopted to get holdof a camera that people eager about filmmak-ing could build for themselves in the 1950s. Itappears that people who could lay their handson a camera could do so partly because of thenature of their profession. Gaining access totechnology was first and foremost dependenton mobilizing, nurturing their relationships

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since the availability and the market of thetechnical apparatus necessary for shooting, de-

veloping, and screening a film was highly cen-tralized: certain institutions controlled them,even if they did not know how to use them.

The following report on the conditions pres-ent in Cluj-Napoca at that time speaks of sim-ilar situations: ‘There were film cameras at thepolice station, the secret police headquarters,the museum, the court, the technological uni-

versity, the students’ cultural centre, the pio-neers’ palace, perhaps even at the publiclibrary; there were also 16mm movie cameras,not just 8mm ones, as well as projectors. How-ever, technology itself did not spread. So, they

did not use it at the interior ministry, and thetelevision studio was the only one to use the16mm technology, partly, for news reporting’(Márton Imecs).24

The centralization of technology did notaffect the institutional framework alone butalso resulted in setting up a hierarchy of local-ities: filmmaking and technological infrastruc-ture was mostly centralized in Bucharest whilepeople living in provincial areas had to carry out the acquisitions through their personal

connections/social network. I did not en-counter this system of procurement throughErvin Schnedarek alone, as the story of thecamera of István Barabás25 (another amateur)reaffirmed this state of affairs: as a painter, heoften travelled to Bucharest where he pur-chased a second-hand film camera and a pro-

jector in order to record his family’s events andtrips.

According to Sándor Haáz Jr., in the sev-

enties, the fact remained that one could buy only second-hand cameras and the transactionhad to be kept secret: Mr. Schnedarek func-tioned as a sort of central commission shop forselling these used cameras on commission.Upon returning from an overseas delegation,people (for example, doctors or diplomats)would often sell their movie cameras to Mr.Schnedarek so that possessing a recording de-

vice at home would not call any unwanted at-tention to themselves on the part of theregime. Actually, those who could manage to

keep possession of a camera were mostly thosein the service of the power,26 and so they were

the ones who were allowed to go abroad.Ordinary people’s possession of film cam-eras – just like of any other type of communi-cation technologies – was considered asubversive act and as such, suspicious in theeyes of those in power: Sándor Haáz Jr. relatedother examples of suspected subversion: ‘Well,back then, anyone making a film was suspi-cious. Only spies made films. Flying on aplane, for example, was also forbidden. They believed that only spies looking for the oppor-

tunity to overthrow the regime would fly. Thisis such a typical, stupid, and mindless commu-nist doctrine.’ Mr Haáz continues on a differ-ent topic: ‘The cine camera and the typewriter!We had a hell of a campaign going on here.They went crazy about typewriters. If some-one had a typewriter at home, house searcheswere carried out, teeth were knocked out, andwho knows what else. So, words such as pass-port, typewriter, and cine camera were just as

dangerous as video would come to be later on.Video (players), colour TVs, etc. were confis-cated between 1985 and 1990.’ Sándor Haáz Jrfinished by admitting: ‘These are some com-munist stupidities that give people a nervousstomach even nowadays’. It was again ErvinSchnedarek who would assist the acquisitionof materials and film processing, and who mo-bilized his acquaintances in order to obtainchemicals – because he operated a sort of pri-

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group organized in the Pioneers’ Palace inTârgu Mureş, as well as the film club in TheCultural Centre of the Syndicates provided aformal framework for filmmaking until 1990,one that could meet the promotional objec-

tives of the regime’s community education andpopular art in the same way as the amateurfilm festivals organized nation-wide. However,the club members’ commitment and gradualprofessionalization were shaped by the infor-mal relationships and not the production of knowledge imposed from above.

Making home movies did not become awidespread practice because direct controland the absence of technology from the mar-

ket (and the concomitant circumstances in- volving the formerly mentioned tactics) washolding back this kind of activity. Therefore,we cannot consider the middle-class amateurfilmmakers’ work characteristic of the period;instead, the relevant cultural patterns wererather made up of those motivations thaturged people to be engaged in filmmaking de-spite the highly supervised conditions: ‘It wasspecifically the maternal and paternal instinctsthat led the way towards amateur filmmaking.

In addition, among the young people, the oneswho were inclined to do it alone were thosewho were so dazzled by the magic of film thatthey started to attend various trade-unionstudy groups of this kind and learn about film-making. But even those pictures bear thetrade-marks of amateurism’ (Márton Imecs).

Recording family life and travelling, aswell as using the medium of moving imagesfor creative purposes are all modalities whose

existence is not specific to the period under in- vestigation but follow up pre-existing mediapractices.

However, media use amidst the strict su-pervisory conditions and the domestication of film may be considered a specificity of the age.

After all, the stories about the troublesomeways of acquiring movie cameras and filmstock give us an insight into the identity andprestige attached to the medium. In addition,the prestige of the medium was also amplifiedby the prevailing system of power as well as the

semi-professional activities of those commit-ted to creating the right conditions for film-making. Thus in this case the medium of filmconstitutes a part of reality: practising it andgaining access to being worth every risk and

effort. ¬It is a force that can create and sustaincommunities, shape people’s relationships, andinfluence individual careers and the process of professionalization.

BIBlIOgRAPHY

Balogh Edgár (ed.) (1991) Romániai magyar irodalmi lexikon II.[Dictionary of Hungarian Literature in Romania. Vol. II] .Bucharest: Kriterion.

Blos-Jáni Melinda (2012) ‘The Nomads of Media-and Family Histories. Rethinking the Home Movie/Video in the Age of User-Generated Content’. Acta Universitatis Sapientiae. Film and MediaStudies 5. (Forthcoming).

Buckingham, David–Willett, Rebekah–Pini, Maria (2011) HomeTruths? Video Production and Domestic Life. University of Michi-gan Press. It can be read as free online content at: http://hdl.han-dle.net/2027/spo.9362787.0001.001

Buglya Sándor (2004) ‘Képek mozgó keretben. A pedagógia mindig

megmarad számomra’ [Images in Moving Frames. Peda-gogy Will Remain Important for Me. Interview with Ervin Schnedarek] .Pergő Képek, 20-21 (4): 5–11.

Chalfen, Richard (1987) Snapshot Versions of Life. BowlingGreen: Bowling Green State University Popular Press.

Dékány István (2000) ‘Az amatőrfilm-mozgalom történeteMagyarországon. A felszabadulástól a videó megjelenéséig(1945–1982)’ [The History of the Hungarian Amateur FilmMovement. From the Liberation to the Appearance of the Video].Pergő Képek, 29 (5): 3–31.

Fogarasi Klára (2007) Képgyártó dinasztia Székelyudvarhelyen. AKováts-napfényműterem száz éve [Image-maker Dynasty at Odor-heiu Secuiesc. The 100 Years of the Kováts Photo-Studio].

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blos jani men with moving camera site

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