Amateur Film: Meaning and Practice, c. 1977-77

Abstract

Interest in marginal and peripheral film histories is ever-increasing within the academy, as last year's Screen Conference theme, ‘Other Cinemas’, illustrates. As part of this larger shift to the periphery, discussions of amateur cinema and filmmaking over the last ten years have gradually expanded in film studies. Heather Norris Nicholson's monograph, Amateur Film: Meaning and Practice, c. 1927–77, is a milestone, then, in that it is the first systematic account of the broader tracings of the amateur film movement in the UK. The cine-club scene, amateur specialist publications (Movie Maker, Amateur Cine World) and amateur film institutions (the Institute of Amateur Cinematographers) that thrived in the 1950s and 1960s have previously been subject to fleeting examination, and when research has been conducted it has generally been synchronic, focusing on particular moments. Nicholson's work over the last two decades as a social and cultural historian has been at the forefront of this reexamination of amateur cinema culture. This monograph represents a significant step towards understanding the specific historical nuances of amateur film practice and culture in the UK. Such focus and enthusiasm for amateur cinema might seem strange to some, as Nicholson is aware: ‘who could have anticipated the international explosion of interest and scholarship in amateur film?’, she asks (p. xi). If we consider the British Film Institute's own rejection of grants for the amateur cine movement in the late 1970s1 and their recent recruitment call for an amateur film curator at the BFI, the turn back to the ‘amateur’ is amply evidenced.