Short description:

From the Tourist?s Gaze bridges environmental humanities and amateur cinema studies, exploring tourism-induced environmental issues through the visual representations created by tourists themselves

Long description:

From the Tourist?s Gaze bridges environmental humanities and amateur cinema studies, exploring tourism-induced environmental issues through the visual representations created by tourists themselves.

The protagonists of the book are families from Nort-West Italy and their holiday films, captured during their holidays in the Ligurian Riviera. The timeframe spans between the 1950s and 1970s, the so-called Italian ?economic miracle?, a period in which Italy experienced an extraordinary and rapid economic growth and, consequentially, a rise in living standards, including tourism and film cameras accessibility. Radical environmental transformations such as the industrialization and cementing of spaces, or the conversion of entire coastlines into territories equipped to receive masses of tourists, were just one of the consequences, studied from a myriad of sources, but never through amateur films. The most illustrative case is the Ligurian Riviera, which has been regarded as an example of land consumption since those contemporary years. Despite being centered on a specific case study, readers will be equipped with practical tools to enhance their study of historical amateur films. These tools are introduced through innovative methodological approaches to archival research and visual analysis. The results will highlight the visual imagery of mid-20th-century tourists and their perspectives on the destinations they visited, offering fresh, visually oriented insights that contribute to the field of tourism studies.

As a visual journey through mid-20th century Italian tourism and its environmental narratives, it may interest cultural geographers, tourism and media scholars, and the broader group of environmental humanists: the latter will have the opportunity to explore amateur cinema as an untapped resource for understanding cultural narratives, while amateur cinema scholars will have an example of a fresh and different approach to their subject. It can also give new insights to archivists specialized in home movies and be appealing to scholars and intellectuals interested in these topics.

Table of Contents:

Introduction Part One 1. Tourists with a Movie Camera 1.1 A Century of Amateur Cinema 1.1.1 The First Attempts at an Amateur Film Practice (1890s-1922) 1.1.2 9.5mm, 16mm and 8mm: The Establishment of the Amateur Cinema Practice (1922-1945) 1.1.3 The Second Post-War and the Cine-Club Era (1945-1965) 1.1.4 The Massification of Amateur Filmmaking: The Arrival of the Super8 (1965-1980s) 1.1.5 The Magnetic Tape and Digitalization Era (1980s-?) 1.2 Home Movies and Their Intrinsic Characteristics 1.2.1 What Is a Home Movie, and What Is Shown in Home Movies? 1.2.2 Who Films the Home Movies? 1.2.3 Who Is the Spectator of Home Movies? 2. Greening the Home Movies 2.1 Holiday Home Movies and Mass Tourism in Italy 2.1.1 An Historical Approach to Home Movies 2.1.2 Holiday Home Movies and Tourism Studies: Tourist Destinations and the Tourist Gaze 2.2 An Ecocritical Perspective on Amateur Cinema 2.2.1 An Introduction to Environmental Humanities and Ecocriticism 2.2.2 Holiday Home Movies as Texts 2.2.3 Holiday Home Movies as Cultural Artifacts 3. Approaching the Archive 3.1 A First Look at Amateur Film Archives 3.1.1 From Domestic to Public Archives 3.1.2 ?Anarchy Reigns in the Realm of Home Movies? 3.2 Geographies of the Archives 3.2.1 CSC - Archivio Nazionale Cinema Impresa di Ivrea 3.2.2 Cinescatti, SuperOttimisti, and Ri-Prese Part Two 4. Holidays and the Economic Miracle 4.1 Historical Context: The Italian Economic ?Boom? 4.1.1 The ?Economic Miracle? 4.1.2 The Rise of Mass Tourism in Italy 4.2 Visual Context: Seaside ?Marketing? in Media 4.2.1 Films and the Seaside Summer Holidays 4.2.2 Postcards for the Tourists and Home Movies from the Tourists 5. The Ligurian Coast: Between Mass Tourism, Land Consumption, Industrialization and Militarization 5.1 Seaside Tourism in Liguria 5.2.1 A First Glimpse into Liguria 5.2.2 Tourism in Liguria 5.2 Environmental Damages during the Twentieth Century Liguria 5.2.1 Mass Tourism, Cementification and Land Consumption 5.2.2 Industrialization and Militarization of the Coast Part Three 6. The Archive Exploration 6.1 For a Targeted Methodology: Adapting the Archival Research 6.1.1 Archival Research from a Geographic Perspective 6.1.2 An Explorative Approach to Archival Research (Archivio Nazionale Cinema Impresa) 6.1.3 A Query-Based Approach to Archival Research (Cinescatti, SuperOttimisti, and Ri-Prese) 6.2 Main Challenges (and Solutions): Artificial Intelligence Applied to Archival Research 6.2.1 Challenges Related to the Archival Groups? Variety 6.2.2 Challenges Related to the Archival Cataloguing Process and to the Call for Amateur Films 6.2.3 Challenges Related to Human Error 6.2.4 Possible Solutions: Facing a Cinematic Orienteering 7. Reading the Home Movie 7.1 Micro and Macro Histories 7.1.1 Conceptualizing Vertical and Horizontal Archival Groups Analysis 7.1.2 From Films to Data: A First Level of Investigation 7.2 Film Coding and Recurring Themes 7.2.1 From Moving to Still Images: Coping with a Grounded Visual Analysis 7.2.2 Revealing the Iterative Ecocritical Themes in Tourist Images 7.2.3 Mapping the Holiday Home Movies 7.3 A Necessary Self-Reflexivity 7.3.1 So, ?Where Do I Stand?? 7.3.2 Narrating Past Holidays from the Present Ecocritical Perspective Part Four 8. Half a Century of Tourism through the Tourists? Eyes 8.1 Filmmakers, Tourists, and Household Fathers: The Archival Groups Analysis 8.1.1 The Filmmaker?s Identikit 8.1.2 The Tourist Locations 8.1.3 The Film Gauge Formats Used 8.2 The Tourist Experience during the Italian Economic Boom 8.2.1 Holidays and Tourists: An Evolution through Time and Class Differences 8.2.2 The Militarization of the Touristic Imagery 8.2.3 The Male Gaze 9. Environmental Discourses in Tourism Representations 9.1 Altered Landscapes: The Coastal Cementification in Liguria 9.1.1 A Thematic Overview 9.1.2 A Diffuse Gaze on the Cementification 9.1.3 Narrations on the Cementification 9.2 The Fisherman and the Tourist: A Clash of Paradigms 9.2.1 An Overview of the Phenomenon 9.2.2 The Films and the Fishing Activity 9.2.3 The Films from SuperOttimisti and Cinescatti?s Archives 9.2.4 Filming Work and Nature 9.3 The Oil Tanker and the Setting Sun: Industrialization from the Tourists? Eyes 9.3.1 Fueling a Touristic Imagery: Oil Tankers and Bulk Carriers in Holiday Home Movies 9.3.2 Power Plants and Factories 9.3.3 The Films from SuperOttimisti, Cinescatti and Ri-Prese?s Archives 9.3.4 Final Notes on Industrialization and Tourism Conclusions