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1984 // Ottakring // Vienna

Independently active in the fields of music, film, photography, visual design, analogue technology, archival work, social research and cultural mediation. Also employed in the technical department of the Filmarchiv Austria in the field of digitization and manual restoration of smallformat cinefilms and archiving of the austrian amateur film heritage.

Discovering and un-archiving 100 years old motherless moving images is diving into fictisious memories. Each of the usual 16 frames per second captures motion and emotion of unknown and long-gone spirits.

Heidi Fial developed a technical process in the darkroom to expose and enlarge small-gauge cinefilm stills and give these ghosts from the past a chance to revive in a mixture of chemical coincidence and concious artistic decisions.

Lecture and screening celebrating the centenary of independent filmmaking

In 1922 Pathé presented a new cinefilm format designed for home use for the first time: the 9.5mm safety film. Under the title "Le Cinéma chez soi" (The Cinema for Home), a package was offered that included the small Pathé Baby hand crank projector and an extensive selection of films to rent or buy. In 1923, the corresponding hand crank camera in pocket format followed.

This appearance marks the foundation for autonomous filmmaking - be it to capture the growth of his children and everyday life or to use the moving image artistically or documentaryly as a mouthpiece for his own messages as an amateur.

Heidi Fial uses original 9.5mm and 16mm film footage to introduce early amateur film art and to question today's, rather derogatory association with the term "amateur".