Global Perspectives on Amateur Film Histories and Cultures

Description

For too long, the field of amateur cinema has focused on North America and Europe. In Global Perspectives on Amateur Film Histories and Cultures, however, editors Masha Salazkina and Enrique Fibla-Gutiérrez fill the literature gap by extending that focus and increasing inclusivity.

Through carefully curated essays, Salazkina and Fibla-Gutiérrez bring wider meaning and significance to the discipline through their study of alternative cinema in new territories, fueled by different historical and political circumstances, innovative technologies, and ambitious practitioners. The essays in this volume work to realize the radical societal democratization that shows up in amateur cinema around the world. In particular, diverse contributors highlight the significance of amateur filmmaking, the exhibition of amateur films, the uses and availability of film technologies, and the inventive and creative approaches of filmmakers and advocates of amateur film.

Together, these essays shed new light on alternative cinema in a wide range of cities and countries where amateur films thrive in the shadow of commercial and conventional film industries.

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Global Perspectives on Amateur Film Histories and Cultures / Masha Salazkina and Enrique Fibla-Gutiérrez
Part I: Medium Specificity and Expanded Media Ecologies
1. Understanding (Amateur) Cinema: Epistemology and Technology / Benoît Turquety
2. Crossing the Amateur Line: The Lesson of Even—As You and I / James Rosenow
3. "I Give You a Toast to the Pioneers!" The Movie Maker Ten Best Video Competition 1982-1983 / Graeme R. Spurr
4. From Insiders to Outsiders: Tracing Amateurism in Chinese Independent Documentary of the 1990s and the 2000s / Margherita Viviani

Part II: Institutions, Industry, and the State
5. Seeking Advice: A Political Economy of Israeli Commemorative Home Videos / Laliv Melamed
6. Amateur Film in the Factory: Forms and Functions of Amateur Cinema in Corporate Media Culture / Yvonne Zimmermann
7. The Ambitions of Amateur Film in Vichy France / Julie Guillaumot
8. On the Amateur Origins of Fernando Birri's Documentary School of Santa Fe / Mariano Mestman and Christopher Moore

Part III: Politics of Legitimization and Subversion
9. The Wind from the South: Experiences of Substandard Filmmaking in Galicia in the 1970s / Pablo La Parra-Pérez
10. Super 8 in Mexico / Jesse Lerner
11. The Videogiornale: Social Movements and Amateur Media Technologies in Bologna Between the Late 1980s and the Early 1990s / Diego Cavallotti
12. "A Vital Human Place" for the Counterculture: Fifth Estate and Amateur Film Culture in Detroit, 1965-1967 / Joseph DeLeon
13. Ingvars Leitis's Subversive Ethnographic Documentaries, 1975–1989: Cover Stories and National Representation in Soviet Latvia / Inese Strupule

Part IV: Transnational Networks: Amateur Cinema Travels
14. Worldly Matters: Distributed Histories of Tunisian Amateur Cinema and the Screening of Nontheatrical Film / Samhita Sunya
15. Early International Super 8 Film Festivals: The Case of Caracas 1976-1980 / Isabel Arredondo
16. A Gift to Mother: "The Most Universally Appealing Kind of Film That Any Amateur Can Hope to Make" / Maria Vinogradova
17. Postcards from Yiddishland: Amateur Filmmaking and Vernacular Yiddish Culture / Rachel Webb Jekanowski
Index

Sujets

• Genres
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Película fotográfica
• General officer
• Cultural studies
• History of film
• General
• Film

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 05 janvier 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9780253052056
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 33 Mo

Extrait

GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES ON
AMATEUR FILM HISTORIES
AND CULTURES
GLOBAL
PERSPECTIVES ON
AMATEUR FILM
HISTORIES AND
CULTURES
Edited by Masha Salazkina and
Enrique Fibla-Guti rrez
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.org
2020 by Indiana University Press
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 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
First printing 2020
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Salazkina, Masha, editor. | Fibla-Guti rrez, Enrique, editor.
Title: Global perspectives on amateur film histories and cultures / edited by Masha Salazkina and Enrique Fibla-Guti rrez.
Description: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020021769 (print) | LCCN 2020021770 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253052025 (hardback) | ISBN 9780253052032 (paperback) | ISBN 9780253052049 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Amateur films-History and criticism.
Classification: LCC PN1995.8 G56 2020 (print) | LCC PN1995.8 (ebook) | DDC 791.43/3-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020021769
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020021770
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Global Perspectives on Amateur Film Histories and Cultures / Masha Salazkina and Enrique Fibla-Guti rrez
Part I Medium Specificity and Expanded Media Ecologies
1 Understanding (Amateur) Cinema: Epistemology and Technology / Beno t Turquety
2 Crossing the Amateur Line: The Lesson of Even-As You and I / James Rosenow
3 I Give You a Toast to the Pioneers! The Movie Maker Ten Best Video Competition 1982-1983 / Graeme R. Spurr
4 From Insiders to Outsiders: Tracing Amateurism in Chinese Independent Documentary of the 1990s and the 2000s / Margherita Viviani
Part II Institutions, Industry, and the State
5 Seeking Advice: A Political Economy of Israeli Commemorative Home Videos / Laliv Melamed
6 Amateur Film in the Factory: Forms and Functions of Amateur Cinema in Corporate Media Culture / Yvonne Zimmermann
7 The Ambitions of Amateur Film in Vichy France / Julie Guillaumot
8 On the Amateur Origins of Fernando Birri s Documentary School of Santa Fe / Mariano Mestman and Christopher Moore
Part III Politics of Legitimization and Subversion
9 The Wind from the South: Experiences of Substandard Filmmaking in Galicia in the 1970s / Pablo La Parra-P rez
10 Super 8 in Mexico / Jesse Lerner
11 The Videogiornale : Social Movements and Amateur Media Technologies in Bologna between the Late 1980s and the Early 1990s / Diego Cavallotti
12 A Vital Human Place for the Counterculture: Fifth Estate and Amateur Film Culture in Detroit, 1965-1967 / Joseph DeLeon
13 Ingvars Leitis s Subversive Ethnographic Documentaries, 1975-1989: Cover Stories and National Representation in Soviet Latvia / Inese Strupule
Part IV Transnational Networks: Amateur Cinema Travels
14 Worldly Matters: Distributed Histories of Tunisian Amateur Cinema and the Screening of Nontheatrical Film / Samhita Sunya
15 Early International Super 8 Film Festivals: The Case of Caracas 1976-1980 / Isabel Arredondo
16 A Gift to Mother : The Most Universally Appealing Kind of Film That Any Amateur Can Hope to Make / Maria Vinogradova
17 Postcards from Yiddishland : Amateur Filmmaking and Vernacular Yiddish Culture / Rachel Webb Jekanowski
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T HIS BOOK STARTED FOUR YEARS AGO AT C ONCORDIA University with the organization of a small international workshop titled The Amateur and the Institution. Since then we have had countless conversations with friends and colleagues who have been instrumental to the shape and content of this project. We would like to thank the students and faculty at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema for participating in the events and discussions that have inspired many of our ideas. Haidee Wasson, Lee Grieveson, and Vinzenz Hediger read our first manuscript proposal and gave us precious feedback and advice about choosing the best possible publisher. Luca Caminati read parts of the manuscript and provided insightful suggestions.
Working with seventeen contributors from around the world has been a rare intellectual privilege but also somewhat of an editorial challenge, and we greatly benefited from expert assistance provided by Kaia Scott, Patrick Brian Smith, and Tess McClernon. Their contributions to the book were made possible by the support of the Concordia University Aid to Research Related Events, Exhibition, Publication, and Dissemination Activities Program. During these years we have asked contributors to revise their chapter drafts countless times, in great part thanks to the astute comments of the external readers and the insistence of the editorial staff at Indiana University Press on achieving the best possible result. We are grateful for their efforts and support.
We want to especially thank each and every one of the authors who have endured endless rounds of revisions, copy editing, and email exchanges. This book belongs to them as much as anyone else. We want to take this opportunity to assert the value of collective projects and collaborative work to further internationalize the conversations within our discipline and beyond.
Finally, we thank our friends and families who have sheltered us throughout this demanding process.
GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES ON
AMATEUR FILM HISTORIES
AND CULTURES
INTRODUCTION
Global Perspectives on Amateur Film Histories and Cultures
Masha Salazkina and Enrique Fibla-Guti rrez
W HEN C HINESE FILMMAKER J IA Z HANGKE WAS ASKED IN the early 2000s what he thought the driving force behind the development of films in the future would be, he tellingly replied, The age of amateur cinema will return (MacKenzie 2014, 622-23). Although his response is situated specifically within the popularization of mini DV filmmaking in China, this prediction is certainly not new. In a decidedly more misogynist and US-centered version of this same sentiment, expressed at the end of the 1991 documentary about the making of Apocalypse Now (Bahr, Hickenlooper, and Coppola 1991), Francis Ford Coppola (in)famously claims:
To me, the great hope is that now these little 8 mm video recorders and stuff have come out, and some . . . just people who normally wouldn t make movies are going to be making them. And you know, suddenly, one day some little fat girl in Ohio is going to be the new Mozart, you know, and make a beautiful film with her little father s camera recorder. And for once, the so-called professionalism about movies will be destroyed, forever. And it will really become an art form. That s my opinion.
Much has already been said about the way these predictions reflect on a series of practical and theoretical developments across the world within contemporary media environments. The global reach of YouTube and other social media platforms, the popularization of mini DV and consumer-level cameras as filmmaking devices around the world, the role of citizen media in the cycle of protests triggered by the 2008 financial crisis, the use of informal recordings during the Arab Spring, and the growing importance of institutional back channels and user-generated content all decidedly signal a critical moment in the relationship between professional and nonprofessional media and the need for its scholarly reconsideration. Indeed, much work within media studies has recently been centered on different articulations and theorizations of so-called participatory culture, governed by a theoretical and ethnographically based understanding of media users and producers that suggests active engagement rather than passive spectatorship.
To fully understand how these media practices reached the center stage they currently occupy-which is inseparable from the larger project of assessing their political and ideological effects-they need to be seen as part of a much longer tradition of vernacular media, one which has existed since the very early days of cinema. Once we begin to look further back in time, we discover that the relationship between what could be considered formal versus informal or professional versus amateur cinematic practice has varied a great deal at different moments of the twentieth century. We can also trace the deep history of the dream of a radical democratization of culture through media production, which comes across as vividly through many of the historical writings on amateur cinema as it does through some of the contemporary discourses on prosumer culture. Thus, instead of reproducing an artificial-and historically unjustifiable-break in media history by assuming that participatory culture is exclusive to the new media, this volume offers a reconsideration of film and media history of the twentieth century that places amateur production at its conceptual center. At the same time, this reconsideration shifts the familiar geographic contours of traditional narratives about the development of film and media apparatus away from European and North American points of origin.
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