Buried Cinema and Forgotten Stories: Amateur Bologna Between Urban Continuity and Discontinuity, An Interview with Paolo Simoni

Interview with Paolo Simoni, one of the founders of Archivio Nazionale del Film di Famiglia and Fondazione Home Movies in Bologna. The conversation first traces the history of the archive’s foundation and of family and amateur filmmaking practices. The second part explores the relationship between amateur cinema and the city in the case of Bologna. These ‘buried’ and forgotten films, produced between the 1920s and the 1980s, are reinterpreted as testimonies capable of revealing memories, social practices, and urban transformations otherwise left unseen showing thus their historical, cultural, and urban value. The archive enables a shift from the private to the public sphere, opening new interpretative, creative, and ethical possibilities. In particular, amateur images of the city reveal continuities and discontinuities in urban space and everyday life, offering critical tools to understand the past and imagine the future.