Ambitious Amateurs - European Filmclubs in the long 1960s

Ambitious Amateurs aims to investigate the so-called mass taste through the lens of the participatory cultural practice of filming in the long 1960s.
The filmmakers were consumers of a medium they were co-creating themselves.
They were producing for a circle of peers, respectively to get recognition from professionals.
The aesthetic form of these films and genres, the excess of meaning, as well as the moral political ideals represent central axes of the analysis.
Additionally, relations between the club members and their activities in national umbrella associations as well as contexts of transnational encounters (i.e. UNICA, founded in 1937) shall be further observed. This will be executed on the examples of selected clubs and locations in Luxembourg, Belgium, France and Germany.

Besides archive research and Oral History, the film documents themselves are the core piece of the analysis. The topic is of particular relevance for general Culture and Media History, due to the historical evolution of censorship and auto-censorship tendencies regarding sexual permissiveness, political militancy or religious statements in the long 1960s. These will be connected with the issue of Americanisation, respectively the rejection of the latter within the discourse of European film creators and the topical press.
The international comparison will additionally facilitate the display of national specificities and diverse temporalities within (Western)Europe. Simultaneously a possibility to conceive certain potential transnational developments – also beyond the ‘Iron Curtain’ – will be generated.