What is kalyska.archive?
Kalyska.archive is a project aimed at searching for and preserving private videos of Belarusians. Such videos are also called home movies or family chronicles, and they reflect people’s everyday lives, lifestyles, family traditions and rituals. For example, videos of family holidays and gatherings, vacations at grandma’s in the village, parties with friends, long and short trips, picnics in the forest, videos from kindergartens and schools, as well as shots of buildings, streets and favorite cakes in a pastry shop. Preservation and subsequent research of such videos helps to understand people’s roots and where the particular community is heading.
We also offer assistance with digitizing your family film archive. More details at the link below
Why we search for private videos?
1. Fear of losing valuable video chronicles. Every year, film and VHS cassettes lose quality and can soon completely deteriorate. If we do not digitize them now, we will lose important evidence of the lives of past generations.
2. Preserving the memory of that “invisible” history of everyday life that does not get into school books. We believe that not only the history of famous political or public figures should be preserved and passed on to descendants.
3. Awakening people’s interest in studying and researching the everyday life of their region, their country. We are confident that the everyday rituals and traditions of Belarusians who lived during the Chernobyl disaster, Perestroika, Glasnost and the formation of the Independent Republic of Belarus are worthy of careful and attentive treatment.
Our goal is to create the first Belarusian archive of private video memory. To do this, we carefully describe and catalog all the collected materials. In the future, we plan to cooperate with authors of scientific and historical research, as well as with artists who are interested in artistic reflection of a given region.
If you have videos shot by Belarusians or about Belarusians both in the country and abroad, we invite you to share them with kalyska.archive. We also ask you to tell your friends and acquaintances about the project. Together, we will be able to preserve even more valuable memories of Belarusian life and everyday traditions of the late 20th century.
Home movies are not “ordinary” stories
Home movies are films or video content created outside of professional production. They can include moving images (motion pictures) of any genre, scale and on any topic.
The use of home movies as a historical source is a relatively new phenomenon. One of the projects dedicated to this is kalyska.archive. Similar archives operate at museums in Hungary, France, Austria, and Poland.Unlike professionally shot videos, private recordings or home movies were not necessarily intended for viewing publicly or by people outside the family or close family circle. This means that as historical sources they should be treated with great care and respect. Home movies provide a unique perspective on private moments in the lives of people, their families, loved ones, and acquaintances. But the significance of home movies is not limited to the home environment. It reflects the traditions and everyday life of entire communities: the experience of migration, adaptation to a new environment, changes in lifestyle, habits, values, rituals and norms.