Amateur Movie Making

Description

Winner, SCMS Best Edited Book Award

A compelling regional and historical study that transforms our understanding of film history, Amateur Movie Making demonstrates how amateur films and home movies stand as testaments to the creative lives of ordinary people, enriching our experience of art and the everyday. Here we encounter the lyrical and visually expressive qualities of films produced in New England between 1915 and 1960 and held in the collections of Northeast Historic Film, a moving image repository and study center that was established to collect, preserve, and interpret the audiovisual record of northern New England. Contributors from diverse backgrounds examine the visual aesthetics of these films while placing them in their social, political, and historical contexts. Each discussion is enhanced by technical notes and the analyses are also juxtaposed with personal reflections by artists who have close connections to particular amateur filmmakers. These reflections reanimate the original private contexts of the home movies before they were recast as objects of study and artifacts of public history.

Accessing Moving Images
Foreword / Alice T. Friedman
Acknowledgments
Introduction / Martha McNamara and Karan Sheldon

Part 1: Locating Contexts: Archive, Material, History, Place
1. A Place for Moving Images: Thirty Years of Northeast Historic Film / Karan Sheldon
2. The Technologies of Home Movies and Amateur Film / Dino Everett
3. A Region Apart: Representations of Maine and Northern New England in Personal Film, 1920-1940 / Libby Bischof
4. A Strange Familiarity: Alexander Forbes and the Aesthetics of Amateur Film / Justin Wolff

Part 2: Creative Choices: Recovering Value in Amateur Film
Reflection 1. The Task at Hand: The Films of Ernest Stillman / Whit Stillman
5. Midway Between Secular and Sacred: Consecrating the Home Movie as a Cultural Heritage Object / Karen Gracy
6. "All the Wonderful Possibilities of Motion Pictures": Hiram Percy Maxim and the Aesthetics of Amateur Filmmaking / Charles Tepperman
7. Comedic Counterpoise: Landscape and Laughs in the Films of Sidney N. Shurcliff / Martha J. McNamara

Part 3: Everyday Lives: Home and Work in Amateur Film
Reflection 2. Perspectives on the Home Movies of Charles Norman Shay, Penobscot Elder / Jennifer Neptune
8. Not-at-Home Movies / Christopher Castiglia and Christopher Reed
9. The Boss's Film: Expert Amateurs and Industrial Culture / Brian Jacobson

Part 4: Families: Private and Public
Reflection 3. "The Ring of Time" in the E. B. White Home Movies / Martha White
10. Opening the Can: Home Movies In the Public Sphere / Melissa Dollman
11. Layers of Vision in Amateur Film / Mark Neumann and Janna Jones
Selected Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Histoire du cinéma
• Histoire du cinéma
• Histoire du cinéma
• Media
• Film
• ART
• Archives
• General
• Collection
• History of film
• General officer
• Archive
• Preservation
• Catalog
• Película fotográfica
• Collections
• Catalogs
• Exhibitions

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 22 mai 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253026446
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

AMATEUR MOVIE MAKING
AMATEUR MOVIE MAKING
Aesthetics of the Everyday in New England Film, 1915-1960
Edited by Martha J. McNamara and Karan Sheldon
Foreword by Alice T. Friedman
With contributions by Dino Everett
Indiana University Press
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2017 by Northeast Historic Film
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: McNamara, Martha J. editor. | Sheldon, Karan editor. | Northeast Historic Film (Organization)
Title: Amateur movie making : aesthetics of the everyday in New England film, 1915-1960 / edited by Martha J. McNamara and Karan Sheldon ; foreword by Alice T. Friedman ; with contributions by Dino Everett.
Description: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2017. | Covers films produced in New England between 1915-1960 and held in the collections of the repository, Northeast Historic Film. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016055001 (print) | LCCN 2017009242 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253026446 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253026163 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253025623 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Amateur films-New England-History-20th century. | Cinematography-New England-History-20th century.
Classification: LCC TR896 (ebook) | LCC TR896 .A43 2017 (print) | DDC 777.0974-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016055001
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Contents
Accessing Moving Images
Foreword / Alice T. Friedman
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Martha J. McNamara and Karan Sheldon
Part I Locating Contexts: Archive, Material, History, Place
1 A Place for Moving Images: Thirty Years of Northeast Historic Film
Karan Sheldon
2 The Technologies of Home Movies and Amateur Film
Dino Everett
3 A Region Apart: Representations of Maine and Northern New England in Personal Film, 1920-1940
Libby Bischof
4 A Strange Familiarity: Alexander Forbes and the Aesthetics of Amateur Film
Justin Wolff
Part II Creative Choices: Recovering Value in Amateur Film
Reflection 1: The Task at Hand: The Films of Ernest Stillman
Whit Stillman
5 Midway between Secular and Sacred: Consecrating the Home Movie as a Cultural Heritage Object
Karen F. Gracy
6 All the Wonderful Possibilities of Motion Pictures : Hiram Percy Maxim and the Aesthetics of Amateur Filmmaking
Charles Tepperman
7 Comedic Counterpoise: Landscape and Laughs in the Films of Sidney N. Shurcliff
Martha J. McNamara
Part III Everyday Lives: Home and Work in Amateur Film
Reflection 2: Perspectives on the Home Movies of Charles Norman Shay, Penobscot Elder
Jennifer Neptune
8 Not-at-Home Movies
Christopher Castiglia and Christopher Reed
9 The Boss s Film: Expert Amateurs and Industrial Culture
Brian R. Jacobson
Part IV Families: Private and Public
Reflection 3: The Ring of Time in the E. B. White Home Movies
Martha White
10 Opening the Can: Home Movies in the Public Sphere
Melissa Dollman
11 Layers of Vision in Amateur Film
Mark Neumann and Janna Jones
Selected Bibliography
Index
Accessing Moving Images
T O VIEW MOVING images related to each essay, visit www.oldfilm.org/amm
Northeast Historic Film offers access to reference copies of the films discussed in Amateur Movie Making: Aesthetics of the Everyday in New England Film . Unless otherwise noted, original films are housed in the collections of Northeast Historic Film, Bucksport, Maine.
In addition to the digital video online, copies of most of these works are available in other forms for teaching and exhibition. For more information, contact Northeast Historic Film technical services, 207-469-0924, or [e-mail] .
Foreword
F OR HISTORIANS, AND no doubt for many other people as well, the opportunity to actually see worlds long past through the eyes of contemporaries is the stuff of fantasy-something longed for, perhaps, but hardly imaginable. We toil away in archives, reading through letters, inventories, and descriptions of people and places, and we peer at paintings, maps, plans, and old photographs that offer tantalizing glimpses of the way things looked to observers and storytellers in past years, decades, or even centuries before our own. Thus the survival and diligent preservation of amateur films and home movies, and the scholarly attention given to them by the essays in this collection, are an incomparable gift-accomplishments to be not only supported but also celebrated. Amateur films offer not simply historical facts and images from the past, but also stories, narratives, and representations-often tantalizingly brief-of the ideas, values, and dreams of the people who made them. They open up new vistas, enabling us to see the world through long-ago lenses and look through eyes now closed by the passage of time. Through them, loss and absence are magically transformed into animated presence, no matter how fragmentary and brief the view. The study of this medium-as historical artifact, new technology, work of visual art, or dramatic narrative-is indeed rich with possibilities.
It is therefore a particular pleasure for the Grace Slack McNeil Program for Studies in American Art at Wellesley College to have been a part of this project since its inception. Thanks to Karan Sheldon, cofounder of Northeast Historic Film, and Martha J. McNamara, director of the New England Arts and Architecture Program at Wellesley College, students of the rich textual and cinematic materials offered by this volume and the accompanying website can not only have access to a wide range of significant examples of the genre, but will also benefit from the careful analysis, personal reflections, and new methodologies offered here. These represent the very best work to date in this area of study.
This volume brings together the research of distinguished historians and scholars from a variety of fields, and the essays in this collection cover a wide range of subjects, from preservation, to technologies of production, to the complex analysis of cultural and artistic meanings embedded in the films themselves. Focusing our attention on everyday events and objects, presenting us with the look and feel of landscapes, families, work, play, and comedic mise-en-sc ne, the amateur films studied here open up a vast array of topics and questions, not only about the material culture of the past, but about the medium itself and its capacities for documentation and narrative invention. Issues of privacy and public consumption are inherent in this investigation. So too are questions about gender identity, sexuality, social class, and even humor; indeed, whatever categories and concerns we might find in contemporary social and material culture can be found here. It is thus particularly gratifying that the editors of this volume have seized upon this opportunity for interdisciplinary collaboration, bringing together scholars whose cutting-edge strategies of criticism and analysis offer a foundational collection of diverse perspectives on which students, scholars, and media artists can build.
Casting light on the relatively new subject of amateur films and home movies through high-quality scholarship, personal reflections, and technical expertise is an endeavor that would no doubt have pleased Robert L. McNeil, founder of the chair and the program at Wellesley College that bear his name. A collector of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American furniture, a student of American painting and architecture, a scientist and an entrepreneur, McNeil was passionate about the need to experiment and innovate through dedicated research, teaching, and public education. His mandate to us was to seek out new perspectives and analyses, look for new avenues of inquiry and new technologies of dissemination, and break new ground in the study of American art. Home movies, like snapshots, photo albums, and other forms of popular visual culture, though long neglected by historians of art and society, clearly represent an exciting new area of research and a vast and still-unexplored treasure trove of original materials worthy of care, preservation, and close examination. Thanks to the commitment of Raina Polivka, Janice Frisch, and the Indiana University Press, this project brings us exciting new scholarship and a range of case studies in a rich and lively format worthy of its subject. This is a significant accomplishment on many levels, and one for which we should all be grateful.
Alice T. Friedman
Grace Slack McNeil Professor of the History of American Art
Wellesley College
Alice Friedman is the Grace Slack McNeil Professor of the History of American Art at Wellesley College. She is the author of Women and the Making of the