Éfren Cuevas Guest Artist

Professor [Catedrático] at the School of Communication of Universidad de Navarra. Author of the books Filming History from Below: Microhistorical Documentaries (2022) and Elia Kazan (2000). Co-editor of the books The Man without the Movie Camera: The Cinema of Alan Berliner (2002), Landscapes of the Self: The Cinema of Ross McElwee (2008). Editor of the book La casa abierta. El cine doméstico y sus reciclajes contemporáneos (2010). He has given seminars and lectures at universities in the USA, Canada, Mexico and Italy, and his publications have been translated into Chinese, Hungarian and Turkish.

His main areas of research are documentary cinema, filmic autobiography, film narratology, realism and representation in film and television, and home movies. In this last field, he recently lead a research project focused in Spain, co-curated an exhibition for Caixaforum centers and coedited the book El cine doméstico: Definición, preservación y apropiación, to be published in October 2026.

Masterclass
Home movies: definition, contemporary practices and filmic appropriation

17:OCT 16h15—17h00 45'
Batalha Centro de Cinema

This masterclass analyzes the phenomenon of home moviemaking, delving into its definition and exploring its contemporary practice and its appropriation in documentary films.

Home moviemaking established itself as a practice in the 1920s, but it wasn’t until the 1980s that archives, academia, and filmmakers alike began recognizing the value of home movies as audiovisual heritage, since they reflected eras, customs, places, and ways of life that had often only been recorded by home moviemakers. Home moviemaking will be defined using three criteria: a medial perspective, which focuses on the materiality of this cinema—its non-professional formats and its style; a communicational perspective, referring to its use and circulation, to its distinctive autobiographical character, which leads to the convergence of creators, protagonists, and audience—the family itself; and a mnemonic perspective, which underscores its role as operator of personal and public memory.

Today, the integration of cameras into smartphones has transformed the ways in which home movies are circulated and received. We now share home videos online, typically through family WhatsApp groups. Furthermore, the mnemonic nature of home movies has given way to a more experiential dimension—as a way of mediating the experience. At the same time, the influence of social media is blurring boundaries, with home videos spilling into the public sphere, altering a key characteristic of the “home mode.”

Alongside this evolution, there has been a growing reuse of home movies in documentaries and experimental films—a trend that began in the 1980s and is now evident in numerous films. Following Esqueda’s proposal, I will briefly outline an analysis of this appropriation, structured around three categories: denotation, de-semantization, and re-signification. These reveal a wide range of approaches, from identitarian stories to microhistorical chronicles and more experimental works.

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Talk
With Alan Berliner by Efrén Cuevas

16:OCT 14h00—14h45 45'
Batalha Centro de Cinema

Alan Berliner’s films have redefined the possibilities of autobiographical documentary, transforming personal histories into reflections on memory, identity and the human condition through an extraordinary use of cinematic composition and archival materials. In this conversation, filmmaker Alan Berliner and scholar Efrén Cuevas, whose research has accompanied Berliner’s work for more than two decades, will discuss the evolution of this unique body of work, from home movies and found footage to essayistic forms of documentary. Together, they will reflect on the creative process behind films such as Intimate Stranger, Nobody’s Business, The Sweetest Sound and Letter to the Editor, exploring how cinema can reshape the past and invite audiences into an intimate yet profoundly universal dialogue.

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