I Never Leave Home Without It: Amateur Filmmaking in the Interwar Period

This article reconstructs the world of the Dutch amateur film around 1930; a dynamic period during which the amateur film gradually developed from being just one branch of photography (cinematography) to becoming an independent film discipline. On the basis of a series of articles about amateur film, published in the photography magazine Focus , we shed light on the changing creative processes and discourses of early amateur films and by extension the ‘making of’ early amateur filmmakers themselves. The series, which was written by a beginning amateur filmmaker on the threshold of the ‘Nederlandse Smalfilmliga’ [Dutch Super 8 league] (1931) and the amateur film magazine Het Veerwerk (1932), offers an interesting insider view of the world of amateur films as it is taking shape. Taking the themes that are covered in the series – ranging from simple films of children and holidays to editing – and the associated user dynamics, the article throws light on the amateur filmmakers’ quest for a distinct production culture and way of creating films.

The subject of this research of this article is the trends, forms, themes and genres of children and adult amateur filmmaking on the context of development of the national film festival movement. The author traces  the evolution of the Russian film festival movement, which is reflected in trends, organizational forms, themes and genres of children, mixed and adult amateur filmmaking in the XX – XXI centuries. Methodological framework of this research is comprised of the dynamics of formation of the experience of emotional-value perception of the visual image of reality (B. M. Nemensky), content analysis, comparative, genre-thematic, statistical, historical-culturological analysis of the themes and genres of works of amateur filmmaking of the Soviet and post-perestroika periods presented at film festivals. As a result of the conducted research, the author divides the traditional filmmaking into enthusiasts of cinemagorahic art and amateur videographers; outlines the organizational forms and development trends of the Russian film festival movement; highlights the thematic peculiarities of modern amateur filmmakers that consist in the successive, traditional, new and lost themes of children and adult amateur films. The traditional amateur film and modern amateur video genres of screen works are determined. The novelty of this research lies in nontraditional approach, as well as comprehensive analysis of the problem of modern development of the amateur film festival movement. The main conclusions are as follows: 1) the division of traditional amateur filmmaking into two groups: enthusiasts of traditional cinematographic art and amateur videographers – creation of the works of new and traditional themes is substantiated by sociocultural peculiarities of modern development of the amateur film festival movement; 2) It is noted that the lost thematic groups, such as the Soviet legacy, would be revived in the works of modern authors; 3) there is an important feature in the development of modern amateur videography in the context of film festival movement and establishment of the new genres.

[Blog-Beitrag im Vorfeld des an der Konferenz gehaltenen Vortrages mit Diskussionsrunde]. The Film Colors projects of the University of Zurich and the Filmmuseum Potsdam joined forces, in order to digitize selected color films from the Filmmuseum’s holdings. This blog post focuses on the results of a cooperation between the SNSF project Film Colors : Technologies, Cultures, Institutionslocated at the University of Zurich (Switzerland) and the Filmmuseum Potsdam (Germany), established by Josephine Dieckeand Dennis Basaldella. The aim is to present an innovative collaboration that brings together specialized knowledge in the realms of film production and film technology with a particular focus on typically marginalized topics, such as amateur filmmaking and film stock manufacturing in selected historical contexts. How can both approaches enrich the debates about the preservation, digitization and circulation of marginal objects?

This article aims to identify various ways in which women’s amateur filmmaking becomes obscured in both film archives and in the academic scholarship on film and filmmaking. Recognising that amateur film is marginalised and undervalued in relation to commercial and professional filmmaking, the article uses the case study of one Irish amateur filmmaker to identify the processes and practices that have resulted in her work being obscured and overlooked. The filmmaker, Sr Maureen MacMahon, was practicing amateur filmmaking from the 1960s to the 1970s and her work is held at the Irish Film Archive. Investigation of Sr Maureen’s filmmaking drew from a variety of sources including the films and film materials, film metadata recorded at the archive, newspaper archives, an archive held at Sr Maureen’s religious order and an interview with Sr Maureen. Analyses of these materials has resulted in three findings: firstly, the dispersal of materials and information pertaining to Sr Maureen across multiple sites posed challenges for our construction of a coherent narrative about her; secondly, Sr Maureen turned her hand to many creative and pedagogic activities beyond filmmaking, and, in her own estimation, she was an arts educator more than a filmmaker; and, finally, the films are not easily categorised as they are generically and stylistically diverse, making auteurist approaches difficult. Drawing from these findings we discuss the challenges that this creates for foregrounding women’s contributions to film.

Abstract: A handful of women stand out as amateur filmmakers in Catalonia’s rich twentieth-century amateur scene (such as Madronita Andreu); others appear in the shadow of their husbands’ work. This article focuses on the trajectories of female Catalan amateur filmmakers Francesca Trian, Emilia Martínez, and Miquelina Fiter, who worked with and for their husbands; the archival traces of their careers often appear under their partners’ names. This article asks: How do we undertake a feminist archival film history through social, institutional, and historical structures that obscure women’s labor? How do we determine authorship in amateur and domestic cinema? Using cinematographic and print culture archival research, this article presents the case of three women amateur filmmakers active before the Spanish Transition whose work is only accessible through state archives and ephemera that document their filmmaking trajectory.

As a form of visual practice distinct from professional film production, amateur filmmaking in private and familial settings primarily served the needs of non-professional filmmakers for personal enjoyment and the construction of individual memory. This visual culture emerged globally in the early twentieth century and entered China in the 1920s and 1930s, facilitated by expanding international communication and trade networks. The formation and activities of the Amateur Cinema League of Shanghai not only highlighted the appeal of amateur cinema to foreign expatriates in the concessions but also demonstrated their attempts to foster social connections through artistic creation in a foreign land. Analysing the amateur filmmaking practices of figures such as Chu Minyi provides insight into the unique characteristics of these local activities in terms of their participants, usage tendencies, and cultural foundations, while also expanding the boundaries and implications of ‘vernacular modernism’ to some extent. A media history investigation into early amateur filmmaking in China, with attention to its situated practices, enables a fuller account of its sociocultural significance. Such inquiry clarifies the complex intersections among technology, media, visual culture, and modernity, and recovers marginalised episodes in the historical uses of film, offering new perspectives for understanding the early development of Chinese cinema.

<p>Many ordinary New Zealanders made amateur films between c.1923-1970. This thesis explores the types of films they made; home movies, community films and films made by members of amateur cine clubs. The discussion focuses on the making, showing and viewing of each of these types of films. Some were shown in private home or club situations, while other films were shown publicly. As a group of films and film practises they offer a valuable source of information on social and cultural history. Their construction differs from orthodox professional film and offers important alternate views of New Zealand society. The sub-genre of amateur film are numerous. Films discussed include newsreels and scripted narrative drama made by amateur cine club members either working alone or in groups. Others under discussion are local films, political films, mountaineering films, educational, instructional and promotional film. The influences on amateur filmmaking are considered: camera company marketing and amateur film manuals, the international amateur film movement and the competition focused cine club culture. The thesis uses four main collections to discuss aspects of amateur filmmaking. These are the films of James Osler of Wairoa, Frederick Thorn of Waiuta, Amos James Smith of Rangiora and Nancy Cameron of Whanganui, all held at the New Zealand Film Archive, Wellington.</p>

<p>Many ordinary New Zealanders made amateur films between c.1923-1970. This thesis explores the types of films they made; home movies, community films and films made by members of amateur cine clubs. The discussion focuses on the making, showing and viewing of each of these types of films. Some were shown in private home or club situations, while other films were shown publicly. As a group of films and film practises they offer a valuable source of information on social and cultural history. Their construction differs from orthodox professional film and offers important alternate views of New Zealand society. The sub-genre of amateur film are numerous. Films discussed include newsreels and scripted narrative drama made by amateur cine club members either working alone or in groups. Others under discussion are local films, political films, mountaineering films, educational, instructional and promotional film. The influences on amateur filmmaking are considered: camera company marketing and amateur film manuals, the international amateur film movement and the competition focused cine club culture. The thesis uses four main collections to discuss aspects of amateur filmmaking. These are the films of James Osler of Wairoa, Frederick Thorn of Waiuta, Amos James Smith of Rangiora and Nancy Cameron of Whanganui, all held at the New Zealand Film Archive, Wellington.</p>

Regional amateur film production is discussed in the article. The specifics of this phenomenon are determined by two factors: the territorial affiliation and the unprofessional nature the amateur filmmakers activities making films outside the official film studios systems. The spread of film ama-teurism in the 21st century is driven by the development of digital technologies that simplify the film production process. However, the place and importance of amateur filmmakers in modern culture are not adequately investigated, which actualizes this study. The purpose of the article is to reveal the specifics of the production and artistic activities of Tomsk amateur directors. The author's hypothesis is that regional cinema is not only a form of amateur creativity but also prosumers activity. The novelty of the study is determined, firstly, by the attention to the film industry of the Tomsk region, secondly, the original author's approach, considering the activities of amateur directors in the context of the new production paradigm of prosumerism. The methodological basis of the study is the sociocultural approach, film appreciation and study of empiric material (short features, indie cinema, documentary, web-series). The study is constructed as follows: signs, which point to the prosumer character of the Tomsk cinema environ is identified. As a result a set of assertions confirming the involvement of amateur film makers in new forms of DIY practices is formulated. 1) Amateur filmmakers multifunctional activities redound to the blurring of the distinction between production and consumption. 2) It is not in doubt, that is voluntary labor, but the fact that it is unpaid labor is not an essential condition, due to the large economic costs of film production. 3) For Tomsk's amateur directors an unstructured and decentralized organization of the production process is typical. 4) Almost all filmmakers have their own or given means of production. 5) The product specifics (film text) are determined by the individual optics of the author and by his regional belonging. 6) The transformative role of film amateurism is expressed in influencing the identity of its participants and in shaping the cultural identity of the region. The authors conclude that the activity of Tomsk's amateur film production contributes to the cul-tural specifics of the region, influences the development of regional identity, and contributes to the formation of new social ties. This non-profit environ based on the personal enthusiasm of people inter-ested in creative self-realization leads to the prosumers practice extension as a way to overcome the negative manifestations of a consumer society.

Following the launch of Kodak's lightweight cine camera in c. 1923, early amateur cine enthusiasts soon featured among the growing numbers of people able to afford overseas visits. As the Mediterranean rapidly regained its pre-war popularity as a travel destination, evidence of its more militarised character and strategic significance recur in the glimpses of veterans and uniformed service personnel, vessels, medals and border securities found in interwar amateur film footage. Deliberate filming of discord is much rarer and gives particular value to the focus here upon the work of an amateur filmmaker who visited Spain during the Civil War on behalf of the Society of Friends (Britain's Quaker movement). The article discusses scenes of relief work, people queuing at feeding centres and refugee movements, and places the footage within a wider consideration of filmic responses to the Civil War and international relief operations. The relevance of such amateur imagery for its contemporary home audience is also explored, in relation to prevailing perceptions of the Mediterranean and, more widely, within a context of socially engaged filmmaking that links to strong British documentary making traditions during the interwar years. Discussion forms part of a broader study of Mediterranean imagery shot by British home movie makers during the 1920s and 1930s and recently studied at the North West Film Archive, Manchester Metropolitan University and at the British Film Institute, London.

Theorizing Amateur CinemaLimitations and Possibilities Ryan Shand (bio) [Begin Page 37] Theoretical consideration of amateur cinema has to be one of the most neglected aspects of film studies. Despite the vitality of the worldwide amateur ciné movement from the early 1930s to the late 1970s, Anglo-American film scholars have made only intermittent attempts at engaging with films produced during this period, films as diverse as Hell Unltd (Norman McLaren and Helen Biggar, 1936), Let Glasgow Flourish (Dawn Cine Group, 1952/56), and It Happened Here (Kevin Brownlow, 1963). It has been over ten years since the last single-authored book was published on amateur filmmaking, yet there have been few significant further interventions in the field. While important studies have emerged in the last few years, there has tended to be a deep divide between empirical research and theoretical critique. For example, Melinda Stone’s otherwise exemplary study of an individual cine-club [End Page 37] uses primary research to recreate the highly active culture of monthly meetings, newsletters, and film contests; however, it does not attempt to situate its findings in relation to the established theoretical debates within the study of amateur cinema, a limitation that underplays the importance of the evidence.1 Conversely, as I will show, ambitious theoretical statements have been made that take little account of the huge growth of film archives around the world in the last few decades and hence widen their analysis to the amateur films that were actually made. This divide between empirical research and theory is impoverishing the understanding of amateur cinema, and I suggest that the current gulf between data and theory needs to be narrowed. In the study of professional cinema, David Bordwell has noted that “being empirical does not rule out being theoretical,” and has made a powerful case for what he calls middle-level research.2 The intention of this particular study is therefore to argue for middle-level theorizing as the preferred practice in the study of amateur cinema. It is clear that due to the limitations of the current debates, misconceptions about the amateur ciné movement and its relevance to contemporary film studies abound.3 While the films made by both individuals and groups over a fifty-year period were varied and unpredictable, scholarly research has been surprisingly myopic in its focus. The three main trends of thought that recur again and again in most analyses are the domestic, the oppositional, and the more recent development of the evidential. These mark the dominant positions that scholars have recourse to when trying to understand what amateur cinema is. They function as tools for understanding what this particular mode of cultural production can do, as well as for its legitimization. It is important to grasp these basic positions, so that work can begin on the areas unconsidered by analyses that develop from these well-established vantage points. Attention to these overlooked aspects will form the second part of this article, when I argue that theoretical frameworks developed for the analysis of home movies are insufficient to cover amateur film production as a whole. For the past thirty years, scholarly attention has focused stubbornly on home movies at the expense of films that have a closer “fit” with the theory and analysis that scholars within film studies pursue. This bizarre situation, I suggest toward the end of the article, is the direct consequence of problems of critical categorization that require refinement. However, first it is necessary to outline the well-established perspectives and how they function within contemporary film theory. [End Page 38] The Domestic and the Nonprofessional One perspective identifies amateur cinema with the ethnography of domestic family life. The work of Richard Chalfen, a scholar who is mainly interested in the communicative function of home photography, brought these cultural documents to the attention of the academy during the 1980s. Chalfen also extends his empirical research and analysis into a chapter on the social use of home movies and suggests a methodological framework to understand the social functions of these films.4 Drawing on Sol Worth’s work on filmmaking practices that developed when people on Navajo reservations were given access to camera technology, Chalfen...

The “Family Film” as Amateur Production GenreFrank Marshall’s Comic Narratives Ryan Shand (bio) [End Page 1] Frank Marshall (1896–1979) was one of the most well-known figures in postwar Scottish amateur film culture. He was involved in developing the remarkable infrastructure that amateur cinema enjoyed in Scotland as the first chairman of the Scottish Association of Amateur Cinematographers (SAAC) when it was formed in 1949 and as a member of the board of the Scottish Film Council until 1972. Tom Clark, former secretary of the SAAC, compared Marshall’s central role within amateur filmmaking in Scotland to the influence that John Grierson exerted on the professional industry.1 Furthermore, Frank Marshall was one of the most active participants in postwar Scottish amateur film culture, responsible for making approximately seventy-seven short films. One recurring preoccupation within this vast body of work was what then was known to its practitioners as family films, a category featuring family members, close friends, and/or pets, which tend to be shot either at the filmmaker’s home, in his or her garden, or on vacation. Family films can be either fiction or nonfiction. Marshall’s family films, in particular, expand moments captured in private cine recordings into planned linear comic narratives. These films provide an opportunity to examine the intersection between the domestic focus of the family as subject and the aesthetic expectations for the genre that prevailed at amateur cine contests. I will show that the family film was championed as a hybrid form that could be celebrated as the emblematic genre of amateur cinema. Examples of family films, in particular, those of Marshall, were recurrently employed by the movement’s champions and critics to illustrate the distinctive nature of the sector to wider audiences. Marshall’s reputation in turn encouraged other amateur filmmakers to attempt their own variations on the genre as it became a formalized category in amateur film competitions, both in Scotland and internationally. This case study demonstrates that some aspects of methodologies that have been developed to analyze commercially released feature films may also be applied to the creative works of nonprofessional filmmakers. Marshall’s amateur films raise questions of authorship, genre, and pragmatic analysis—approaches that have been well rehearsed in studies of feature films. Dana Polan reminds us that studies of authorship require critical engagement with archival resources to provide historical context: A related aspect of auteurism today has to do not simply with the reincarnation of older auteurist methods but their refinement or even transformation. . . . New advances in historiography (for example, the potentials that gritty archival work offers) have led, in contrast, to a greater concreteness and detail in the examination of just what the work of the director involves.2 [End Page 2] Frank Marshall, accordingly, may be studied as an example of an amateur auteur—that is, as a director who exhibits stylistic continuity but is also significant because he or she influenced a particular genre of film.3 In both the amateur film press and in later archival cataloging, a film “in the Frank Marshall style” is shorthand indicating peculiar personal idiosyncrasies and certain generic qualities that other filmmakers sought to replicate and refine.4 Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Frame enlargement from ARP: A Reminder for Peacetime (Frank Marshall, 1940). The Marshall family from left to right: Muriel, Chrissie, Nairn, and Frank. From the collection of the Scottish Screen Archive at National Library of Scotland copyright NLS. Marshall’s films are often centered on his immediate family: his wife, Chrissie, daughter Muriel, son Nairn, and, later, his grandchildren.5 Most of his films are variations on a few familiar themes that give them a distinct authorial signature. The comic narratives that incorporate these domestic preserves are slight tales spun around small incidents that disrupt the tranquility of home life in Whitecraigs (a suburb on the south side of Glasgow) before equilibrium is happily restored. The mode of production specific to amateur cinema meant that “cinedads,” as George Wain called them, could integrate family members into their films as a pragmatic way to recruit and retain actors.6 Children are readily available and often can be...

Reviewed by: Mining the Home Movie: Excavations in Histories and Memories Robert Goff (bio) Mining the Home Movie: Excavations in Histories and Memories. Edited by Karen L. Ishizuka and Patricia R. Zimmermann. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. Pp. xix+333. $60/$24.95. This is an informative and useful collection of essays on the historical and cultural significance of home movies, or, more broadly, amateur film. It grew out of a conference organized by coeditor Karen Ishizuka at the Getty Institute in 1998 and attended by a group of film archivists, scholars, and filmmakers. Coeditor Patricia Zimmermann introduces the essays and traces the development—before and after the 1998 conference—of a now well-established international movement to collect, preserve, and study amateur films. The collection of essays reflects not only the multicultural and international perspectives of the contributors but also a diverse range of approaches to their subject. Leading film curators present overviews of their growing archives of amateur film or highlight specific films from their collection, filmmakers discuss the uses they have made of home movies, and academics try to make scholarly sense of these “orphan” films. There is much to learn from many of these contributors, but Zimmermann’s “collage” arrangement leaves the reader with little guidance as to how to navigate through all twenty-seven essays. There are no subheadings and seemingly little order to the placement of the contributions. I would have liked at least some attempt at organization by geography or time period, or simply by some identifiable theme. I discovered—somewhat laboriously—that the trauma of World War II as recorded by amateur filmmakers was the content of a significant number of entries, with five essays largely concerned with film of the internment of Japanese Americans. Topaz (footage by an inmate of a Utah internment camp of that name) is only the second home movie, after the Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination, to be accepted on the National Film Registry, and this important milestone is discussed at length in the entry on the work of the Registry. The Holocaust is invoked by London’s Imperial War Museum’s home movies of a Belgian family who successfully sheltered two Jewish children during World War II and also by a critical analysis of The Maelstrom, a movie by contemporary filmmaker Péter Forgács, which incorporated home movies of a Jewish family in Holland, most of whose members later died in the Holocaust. Forgács himself contributes a theoretical essay on home movies, with some discussion of his own films. Zimmermann mentions that many amateur filmmakers imitated Hollywood narratives (and she explores this theme in greater length in her 1995 Reel Families, an important social history of American home movies), but none of the contributors seriously examine the links between Hollywood and the world of amateur film. The Academy Film Archive collects not only Academy Award–winning movies but also has a large archive of [End Page 956] the home movies by Hollywood professionals, as does the Library of Congress. This footage raises the question of how “amateur” some of the films in these collections actually are. Certain essays note that film equipment was too expensive for most working-class citizens in Western European countries up to the 1960s, and this lack of affordability still persists for people in many places. Understanding the class perspective of those who made amateur films can be illuminating, and a perceptive reading by Heather Norris Nicholson of some films shot by middle-class hobbyists of factory workers says much about the class structure in northern England in the 1940s and 1950s. Another illuminating essay, by Nico De Klerk, concerns films made in the Dutch East Indies in the early twentieth century. By singling out key shots of Dutch colonialists interacting with their native servants, De Klerk demonstrates that the “situational rootedness” of home movies can cut through abstract theorizing about colonial relationships and reveal important details no other medium can provide. Roger Odin’s theoretical essay on the family home movie is the only one to mention the availability of contemporary home movies on the internet. The increasing significance of YouTube and other web outlets suggests the...

This paper builds on the research conducted for the Centenary of Amateur Cinema in Catalonia, which included the localisation, restoration, and digitalisation of 108 films made by amateur filmmakers from 1928 to 1938, 62 of which are nonfiction, to position amateur cinema as the missing link in documentary film history. I will do so through the figure of Eusebi Ferré, whose archive was partially recovered in the context of the project. 90 years after the shooting of his films, which earned international awards and were praised by the critic Josep Palau in 1934 for their ‘acute sense of observation’, this paper highlights Ferré as one of the most interesting and unknown filmmakers of the documentary impulse in Spain in the 1930s. His work epitomises how amateur cinema was the backbone of the creative relationship with current affairs in the absence of a strong local film industry, leaving us with a precious archive of everyday life that still awaits its history.

Chapter 02. Floating Hotels: Cruise Holidays and Amateur Film-making in the Inter-war Period