Around 140 clips collected by the “Memories on Film” project, half of which are now available on the web
Trips out of town, first communions, ski falls, tricycle rides. And more: carnival floats in a parade in 1957, students competing in a sporting event at the Serravalle stadium in 1977, a person on stilts and a child dressed as Batman dancing in Domagnano in 1995, with the soundtrack from a Federico Fellini film playing in the background.
This and much more can be found in the approximately 140 films collected by the University of the Republic of San Marino as part of the "Memories on Film" project, which will be presented to the public on Monday, March 9th with a second preview divided into two phases.
The first, starting at 5:00 PM at the university campus at Viale Onofri 87, will feature presentations by key academics who participated in the initiative and the screening of several clips. The second, starting at 6:00 PM at the Galleria Nazionale, will focus on the description of an installation created using some of the archive's footage.
"Thanks to our donors and the support of the Oltre Foundation, we have collected, digitized, archived, and made available a veritable treasure trove of images and memories tied to our community," explains Maria Elena D'Amelio, professor at the University of San Marino and the project's scientific director. "This public material, now freely accessible, is for which we are envisioning a multifaceted future. In addition to being used during classes in the Communication and Digital Media degree program, as well as in middle and high schools, it can be interpreted by local artists to create new and refreshing works, just like the one presented in the second part of our initiative."
The installation will be introduced by Umberto Baldacci, a collaborator on the project, and Rita Canarezza, a staff member at the Galleria Nazionale. The list of speakers at 17 pm includes, in addition to D'Amelio, Patrizia Violi, director of the Center for Studies on Memory at the University of San Marino, and Mario Panico, professor at the University of Bologna.
The digitization was achieved through a partnership with the Home Movies Foundation – National Archive of Family Films, which included 73 of the approximately 140 clips collected on the website memoryscapes.it: they can be viewed by accessing the “Territories” section.
The "Memories on Film" project, announced three years ago and developed from the Multimedia Archive of Sammarinese Memories, is being conducted in collaboration with the Cultural Institutes. The March 9 event will represent a new official preview of the process involving the collected material, following an initial presentation in May 2024. Admission is free.
Anyone who wants to make their family videos available can do so by writing to the email address amms@unirsm.sm.