From the 8th to the 10th of December 2016, Archipop organised the 26th annual meeting of the association INEDITS on the theme “Youth on the move” in Beauvais.
After a morning round table on the state of audiovisual archives in local cultural policies, the 26th meeting of the association opened with a screening of amateur films from members’ collections. On the theme “Youth on the move”, the screening was presented by the french historian Nicolas Palluau and allowed the discovery of films shot between 1935 and 1972 about youth organisations and their actions. Discussions continued the following day at the round table “Filming the School of Life: educational movements, holiday camps and outdoor sports in European amateur films in the 20th Century”. This meeting was also an opportunity to discover the audiovisual collections of the Pôle des Archives de la jeunesse et de l’éducation populaire (PAJEP) (French archives of youth organisations and “popular education”) hosted by the Archives départementales du Val-de-Marne (France).
Two new members were welcomed during this edition: the filmmaker Robin Hunzinger and the association Image’Est (France). Several members also presented their current projects: a feedback of the 30 th anniversary of the Cinémathèque de Bretagne, another speech about the Regard Caméra exhibition in Rouen, the presentation of Archivio Aperto organised by Home Movies in Bologna and at last, a report of the developments of Home Movie Day in Prague by the National Film Archive (NFA). Franco-German artists Claire Fristot and Jan Bode, who have already collaborated with Ciclic on their show Intruders, came to meet the members and talk about their desire to continue their work with other European archives.
Many European projects were discussed in Beauvais. Two members are involved in Interreg projects: the Cinémathèque des Pays de Savoie et de l’Ain is part of the Franco-Swiss project EntreLACS, and the association MIRA (Alsace, France) was preparing a collaboration with Germany on amateur films of the Upper Rhine. Finally, we received a consultant from Relais Culture Europe (Creative Europe desk in France) to better understand the eligibility criteria of the European Commission and to think about a common project.
In addition, two workshops allowed members to discuss their practices, first on the different pedagogical uses of amateur films, and second on the technical choices made when digitising films.
Throughout the meetings, several screenings made a great impression on the audience. Filmmaker Léo Favier presented his short film Après le Volcan (After the Vulcano), an ecological fiction, full of humour and conceived entirely from amateur films from Ciclic’s collections. The director Gilles Perret also exchanged extensively with the spectators about his documentary La Sociale, on the history of the social security in France. Finally, Louis Pelletier, a film historian, a researcher at Concordia University, and organiser of Home Movie Day in Montreal, screened and added a brilliant commentary on the program of amateur films from Quebec around the theme “Parades”.