Perhaps the most typical stylistic feature in amateur-family cinema is that of the greeting. In every film-memory in fact, there’s always someone who (…) at a certain point raises up their hand and waves hello. I was struck by it because I got the feeling that the gesture, unconscious and instinctive, comes from the need to recover the “human” who is put in the difficult three-way situation determined by the camera, which interferes between the family-actor and the family-director. No one would ever think to wave to a movie camera if it were, for example, sitting by itself with a self timer on a tripod. Differently, in a normal situation the actor feels watched but does not see himself being “watched”, and this puts his human relations in difficulty so he instinctively waves, almost like the children’s game “peek a boo”, meaning: hi, I’m here, look at me!

Sirio Luginbühl, Cinema Underground Oggi, Mastrogiacomo Editore Images, 1970