Bloomsbury 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. Review ght of recent shifts in technologies, socio-economic circumstances and ideas of personal space. With the rise of a new wave of practitioners and pro-sumers utilising digital technology and a new generation of intellectuals, this collection dynamises the home movie discourse, with the web mobilising the archive, articulating an intriguing relationship between current scholarship on personal filmmaking and this most quotidian and intimate form. -- Deane Williams, Associate Professor of Film and Television Studies, Monash University, Australia, and editor of the journal Studies in Documentary Film Hats off to Laura Rascaroli, Gwenda Young, and Barry Monahan for assembling fascinating highlights from their ground-breaking 2010 conference on amateur film, Saving Private Reels. Amateur Film: The Home Movie, the Archive, the Web features 23 essays that explore the diversity of the 'home movie' which span nations, genres, eras, aesthetics, and critical frames. This collection includes studies of some unlikely film figures like Errol Morris as well as largely unknown auteurs; it maps diverse visions of the past and future by examining pioneering 16mm and 8mm amateur films from Ireland, England, India, and China, to name a few; new archival practices; the latest YouTube viral videos as well as multiplatform experiments for Web 2.0. Writers are diverse in their origins, interest areas, and intellectual approaches. Some highlights include Richard Kilborn and Ruth Balint each writing on Hungarian archivist-filmmaker Péter Forgács and Dominique Bluher on the prolific French filmmaker Joseph Morder. This collection leaves one hungry for more. As Marker might have asked, 'Will there be another collection?!' -- Deirdre Boyle, Associate Professor, The School of Media Studies, The New School, USA About the Author 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. 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. 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).