Scrapbooks, soap dishes and screen dreams: ephemera, everyday life and cinema history

Abstract

This paper will explore the value to researchers of ephemera and artefacts produced around the moving image as a way of rethinking cinema history. The author is the Curator of The Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture at the University of Exeter, a public museum and research facility based around collections of extra-textual materials on the moving image. Using examples from this collection, he argues that ephemera can form a bridge between the film text and the context, explaining how one relates to the other. Created for the lived moment, ephemera can also offer a corrective to critical hindsight and be a vital research tool tracking the changes in the understanding of cinema history by the audience. Ephemera also illustrates interactions between producers and consumers, and the medium's role in everyday life. While there are critical problems that need to be addressed in its application, use of ephemera as research materials can provide a valuable perspective on cinema history to consider alongside other sources and methods. Each new encounter between an object from the past and the present day can create fresh meanings and so using these objects to teach cinema history offers new methodologies and interpretations for cinema researchers.