From the Tourist’s Gaze - Holiday Home Movies as Vernacular Sources for the Ecocritical Thought

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

List 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

About the author

Pietro Agnoletto is a post-doctoral fellow in geography at the university of Milano Bicocca, Department of Human Sciences for Education, and an independent filmmaker specialized in documentaries and experimental films. With a background in Film Studies (University of Padova), his doctoral research focused on home movies with the aim of analysing them from an ecocritical perspective while being part of the national project "Greening the Visual" (P.I. Elena dell'Agnese). Currently, he is working in the project "Islands 4 Future" in which he is conducting visual participatory research with the young residents of the Islands of Ponza to explore their idea of heritage and to give them the instruments to express it through a film.

Product details

• Authors: Pietro Agnoletto
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 27.06.2025
• EAN: 9781032931548
• ISBN: 978-1-032-93154-8
• No. of pages: 298
• Weight: 730 g
• Illustrations: schwarz-weiss Illustrationen, Raster,schwarz-weiss, Zeichnungen, schwarz-weiss, Tabellen, schwarz-weiss
• Series: Routledge Insights in Tourism Series
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History; Social sciences, law, business > Media, communication > Media science; History, Media Studies, Humanities, Transport: general interest, Tourism industry, Retail and wholesale industries