Holiday home movies and the socioeconomic transformation of coastal areas. The case of Liguria region during the “economic boom” from the touristic gaze

“Amateur films and the city” is a topic that emerged recently which merged mapping and exploring the evolution of the city and the relationship between residents and the urban space during the last century. Starting from these trajectories, my research focused on holiday movies, i.e., the home movies realized during the touristic experience as memories. The aim was to explore the touristic gaze in front of the urban transformations of the coasts happened during the Italian economic boom (between the Fifties and the Eighties) and caused by the switch from an economy based on fishery to an economy based on tourism itself. Home movies can become very important primary sources to better explore this very recent history. To reach this objective, more than 300 films preserved at the “Archivio Nazionale del Cinema d’Impresa - CSC” in Ivrea (TO) has been analyzed. The case study was the Liguria region filmed by Piedmont region amateur filmmakers. A transversal approach has been adopted which focused on the emersion of a diffuse gaze by analyzing the totality of the films instead of highlighting particularly relevant films. Multidisciplinary tools and methodologies taken from visual sociology and geography have been embraced to better achieve the goal. This contribution will present the main methodological problems and solutions faced during the research and the main results of the project, mainly focusing on the most original or innovative aspects of it.