Article:
Experimenting in circles: Agfa, amateur cinema, and the art of R&D

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dc.creatorDe Rosa, Miriam
dc.creatorMariani, Andrea
dc.date.accessioned2024-01-25T12:24:56Z
dc.date.available2024-01-25T12:24:56Z
dc.date.issued2023
dc.description.abstractThis article moves from small-gauge film technology manufacturing and experimental film practices to develop a twofold exploration of film and camera conceptually interlinked in a mutual cycle of experimentation. Italian filmmaker Ubaldo Magnaghi’s city symphonies provide an illustrative example: active in the early 1930s as an independent filmmaker, between 1930 and 1933 he produced five films sponsored by Agfa, which was expanding its market in Italy. Magnaghi’s experimental films were thought to stress the material resistance of cameras (an Agfa Movex 30) and the film stock (Agfa Isopan reverse). The article will shed light on the affordances offered to the filmmaker regarding the film stock’s specificities and the camera involved in the manufacturing process. Such a virtuous cycle connecting manufacturing and creativity is metaphorically reinforced on the level of aesthetics in Magnaghi’s film Symphony of Life and Work (1933), characterised by a reiterated circling camera movement. Inspired by this, we aim to craft a study that assembles the various components of the filmmaker’s work in a rounded film experience, underlining the nature of small-gauge cinema as a non-neutral yet empowering practice able to create a complex room for critical analysis eliciting new ways of looking, problematising, and therefore thinking reality.en
dc.identifier.doihttp://dx.doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/21720
dc.identifier.urihttps://necsus-ejms.org/experimenting-in-circles-agfa-amateur-cinema-and-the-art-of-rd/
dc.identifier.urihttps://mediarep.org/handle/doc/22967
dc.languageeng
dc.publisherNECS
dc.publisher.placeMarburg
dc.relation.isPartOfissn:2213-0217
dc.relation.ispartofseriesNECSUS_European Journal of Media Studies
dc.rightsCreative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 Generic
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
dc.subjectexperimental filmen
dc.subjectamateur cinemaen
dc.subjectfilm manufactoryen
dc.subjectAgfaen
dc.subjectcinema industryen
dc.subject.ddcddc:791
dc.titleExperimenting in circles: Agfa, amateur cinema, and the art of R&Den
dc.typearticle
dc.type.statuspublishedVersion
dspace.entity.typeArticle
local.coverpage2024-01-26T02:35:26
local.identifier.firstpublishedhttps://necsus-ejms.org/experimenting-in-circles-agfa-amateur-cinema-and-the-art-of-rd/
local.source.epage195
local.source.issue2
local.source.issueTitle#Cycles
local.source.spage176
local.source.volume12

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