The Changing Face of the Amateur Holiday Film In Britain as Constructed by Post-War Amateur Cine World (1945–1951)

Abstract

Amateur film-making, motoring and holidaymaking were three complementary leisure activities that re-emerged with a greater intensity for middle-class consumers in Britain in the immediate post-war period. The end of restrictions on travel, an increasing availability of film stock and the first real chance to take advantage of the Holidays With Pay Act (the latter of which had been disrupted by the Second World War) created new opportunities for cine enthusiasts to produce a holiday film after 1945. In this article, I consider how instructional articles on how to make a holiday film may have helped to construct ideologically a sense of British national identity for the middle-class readers of Amateur Cine World between 1945 and 1951. These articles can be mapped closely with the shifting patterns of holidaymaking in the post-war period, and tend to encourage cine hobbyists to construct a sense of Britishness through their representations of the holiday; initially through images of the British countryside and coastline, and eventually by the framing of cultural difference in their first holidays abroad. A close analysis of this discourse can provide an insight into a construction of class, gender and national identity that is an alternative to the mainstream British feature film, for instance.