Amateur Cinema The Rise of North American Moviemaking, 1923-1960 [Hardcover]

From the very beginning of cinema, there have been amateur filmmakers at work. It wasnt until Kodak introduced 16mm film in 1923, however, that amateur moviemaking became a widespread reality, and by the 1950s, over a million Americans had amateur movie cameras. InAmateur Cinema,Charles Tepperman explores the meaning of the amateur in film history and modern visual culture.

In the middle decades of the twentieth centurythe period that saw Hollywoods rise to dominance in the global film industrya movement of amateur filmmakers created an alternative world of small-scale movie production and circulation. Organized amateur moviemaking was a significant phenomenon that gave rise to dozens of clubs and thousands of participants producing experimental, nonfiction, or short-subject narratives. Rooted in an examination of surviving films, this book traces the contexts of advanced amateur cinema and articulates the broad aesthetic and stylistic tendencies of amateur films.

Charles Teppermanis Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the University of Calgary.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I. Contexts of Amateur Cinema
1. Cin?-Prophecy: The Emergence of Amateur Cinema (18921927)
2. Cin?-Community: The First Wave of Amateur Film Culture (19281945)
3. Cin?-Engagement: Amateurs and Current Events
4. Cin?-Technology: Machine Art for a Machine Age
5. Cin?-Sincerity: Postwar Amateur Film Culture (19451960)

Part II. Modes of Amateur Cinema
6. Communicating a New Form of Knowledge: Amateur Chronicles of Family, Community, and Travel
7. The Amateur Takes Leadership: Amateur Film, Experimentation, and the Aesthetic Vanguard
8. Mechanical Craftsmanship: Amateurs Making Practical Films
9. Photoplaying Themselves: Amateur Fiction Films

Conclusion

Appendix 1. Amateur Filmography
Appendix 2. A Plc*