Amateur Filmmaking The Home Movie, the Archive, the Web

With the advent of digital filmmaking and critical recognition of the relevance of self expression, first-person narratives, and personal practices of memorialization, interest in the amateur moving image has never been stronger. Bringing together key scholars in the field, and revealing the rich variety of amateur filmmaking—from home movies of Imperial India and film diaries of life in contemporary China, to the work of leading auteurs such as Joseph Morder and Péter Forgács—Amateur Filmmaking highlights the importance of amateur cinema as a core object of critical interest across an array of disciplines. With contributions on the role of the archive, on YouTube, and on the impact of new technologies on amateur filmmaking, these essays offer the first comprehensive examination of this growing field.

Laura Rascaroli is Toyota Lecturer in Film and Media Studies at University College Cork, Ireland. She lectures on Italian film and television in the Department of Italian and on European cinema in the School of Languages and Literature. She is co-Chair of the Board of Film Studies and coordinates the MA in Film Studies.

Barry Monahan is Lecturer in Film Studies at University College, Cork, Ireland. He has written on, and researched, the relationship between the Abbey Theatre and cinema from the beginning of the sound period until the 1960s, something he explores in his monograph Ireland's Theatre on Film: Style, Stories and the National Stage on Screen (2009).

Gwenda Young is Lecturer in Film Studies at University College Cork, Ireland. Her work has appeared in a variety of national and international journals, including Sight and Sound; Popular Culture Review; Film/Film Culture; Film Ireland; Journal of Irish Association for American Studies. She has also contributed to radio programmes on the national broadcaster, Radio Telefís Éireann, and local radio.

Michael Renov: Preface
Barry Monahan, Laura Rascaroli, Gwenda Young: Introduction
SECTION ONE: REFRAMING THE HOME MOVIE
1. Roger Odin: Home Movies and the Notion of ‘Space of Communication'
2. Liz Czach: Amateur Filmmaking, Home Movies and National Cinema
3. Maija Howe: The Photographic ‘Hangover': Reconsidering the Aesthetics of the 8mm Home Movie.
4. Mark Neumann: Amateur Film, Automobility and the Cinematic Aesthetics of Leisure.
SECTION TWO: PRIVATE REELS, HISTORIOGRAPHICAL CONCERNS
5. Heather Norris Nicholson: Cinemas of Catastrophe and Continuity: Mapping out Amateur Practices of Intentional History-making in North West England, c. 1927-1977
6. Annamaria Motrescu: Uncensored Imperial Politics in British Home Movies from 1920s-1950s
7. Karen Lury: The Problems of Micro-history and the Amateur Film
8. Janna Jones: Mapping the Amateur Film: Tad Nichols's 1939 Navajo Rug Weaving
9. Rachel MagShamhráin: Adolf Talks! The Afterlife of Hitler's Home Movies
SECTION THREE: NONFICTIONAL RECONTEXTUALISATIONS
10. Efrén Cuevas: A Change of Scale: Home Movies as Microhistory in Contemporary Documentaries
11. Barry Monahan, Laura Rascaroli, Gwenda Young: Amateur images of a nation's past re-framed: Alan Gilsenan's Home Movie Nights
12. Stefano Odorico: Home Movies and Metalanguages in Mainstream Documentaries
SECTION FOUR: AMATEUR AUTEUR
14. Richard Kilborn: ‘I Am a Time Archaeologist': Some Reflections on the Filmmaking Practice of Péter Forgács.
15. Ruth Balint: The Visual Orchestration of History: Representing the Past and the Meaning of Home in Péter Forgács's Private Hungary
16. Dominique Bluher: Camp and Anatopism—Joseph Morder's Super 8 Fictions
SECTION FIVE: EXPANDING THE ARCHIVE
17. Susan Aasman: Saving Private Reels? Archiving User-generated Content (Formerly Known as Home Movies) in the Digital Age
18. Patricia Zimmerman: The Home Movie Archive Live
SECTION SIX: THE HOME MOVIE IN THE 21ST CENTURY
19. Tianqi Yu: My Self On Camera: Representations of the Familial Self in Contemporary China
20. Lauren Berliner: Monetizing Home Movies on YouTube
21. Abigail Keating: Living in Public: Web 2.0 and the Interactive Home Video