Film Studies Librarian
Dartmouth College
25 N Main ST
Hanover, NH 03755
Other library resource(s)
Orphan films from Oxford Bibliographies Online by Call Number: Electronic resourceISBN: 9780199791286The interest in orphan films has been bolstered by the creative work of media artists, often working in tandem with archives. Belloï 2011 invokes the longer-standing term “found footage,” traditionally used to describe experimental works made from older films. ...
Internet resource(s)
- Center for Home MoviesTheir mission is to transform the way people think about home movies by providing the means to discover, celebrate, and preserve them as cultural heritage.
- Northeast Historic Film (NHF)
NHF is a nonprofit archives dedicated to collecting, preserving and sharing northern New England's moving image heritage.
Keeping up with the journal literature
Want an easy way to keep up with the journal literature for all facets of Film Studies? And you use a mobile device? You can install the BrowZine app and create a custom Bookshelf of your favorite journal titles. Then you will get the Table of Contents (ToCs) of your favorite journals automatically delivered to you when they become available. Once you have the ToC's you can download and read the articles you want.
You can get the app from the App Store or Google Play.
Don't own or use a mobile device? You can still use BrowZine! It's now available in a web version. You can get to it here. The web version works the same way as the app version. Find the journals you like, create a custom Bookshelf, get ToCs and read the articles you want.
A quick definition for amateur film
A set of practices of non-professional or hobbyist filmmaking, often (as home movies) recording family and leisure activities, but also including local newsreels, films of amateur dramatic productions, home-made pornography, and films of all kinds by members of film societies. The scale and nature of amateur film is closely associated with developments in dedicated consumer technologies. While the standardization of the 16mm film format in 1923 opened filmmaking to non-professionals, amateur film largely remained the province of the technically oriented (and the well-off) until after World War II. In consumer societies like the USA’s, home moviemaking saw a sharp rise in the 1950s: simpler 8mm cameras were introduced and found a ready market, while suggestions of suitable subjects, techniques, and approaches for personal moviemaking featured in home and family magazines as well as in the technical press. The market has since been continually renewed by the introduction of new technologies, from the super-8mm camera to the home video camera, the digital camcorder, and the smartphone. Amateur filmmaking technologies have been, and continue to be, deployed for a wide range of purposes beyond home, family, and local community–from experimental and avant-garde filmmaking to ethnographic film and political campaigning; and amateur films of all kinds can be disseminated and viewed on the internet (see Youtube). Old personal films are collected by a number of local and regional film archives, and figure regularly in fiction and documentary films and television programmes as a means of evoking memory and nostalgia.
In film studies, amateur film is studied (often under the rubric of personal film) in terms of its history, its technologies, and its aesthetics; while anthropologists and other social scientists studying ‘home mode imagery’ consider how it works as a social practice—as a distinctive form of visual communication, in relation to its place in consumer culture, and in terms of the everyday uses of its technologies. See also machinima.
Kuhn, A., & Westwell, G. (2020). Amateur film. In A Dictionary of Film Studies. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 24 Apr. 2023
Finding library resources for amateur films
To find what we have in the Library's collection, you can do a subject search for "amateur films" in the online catalog. That search will show you what film titles are classified as amateur films as well as books and other items about them.
As you look at the list under amateur films, the subject headings which include "history and criticism" talk about the genre itself. The headings which also include a country name are specifically talking about amateur films in that country.
- amateur filmsThe phrase "home movies" is not used as a subject heading in the online catalog.
- amateur films [ ...insert name of country ...]This subject search finds amateur films produced in different countries.
- "home movies"This is a keyword search in the online catalog.
Introductory reading(s)
Mining the home movie by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1995.8 .M56 2008ISBN: 9780520248076The first international anthology to explore the historical significance of amateur film, Mining the Home Movie makes visible, through image and analysis, the hidden yet ubiquitous world of home movie-making.
Reel families: a social history of amateur film by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780253209443Amateur film has been seen as the junkheap of private culture. Yet music videos recycle home movies as authenticity; commercials copy its style to sell intimacy; documentaries use it to recount history "from below." Reel Families is the first historical study of amateur film, the most pervasive of media. Patricia Zimmerman charts the history of this medium from 1897 to the present, examining how ideological, technical, and social constraints have stunted amateur film's potential for extending media production beyond corporate monopolies and into the hands of everyday people. ...
There's no place like home video by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1992.945 .M67 2002ISBN: 9780816638017Moran offers a cultural history of amateur home video, exploring its technological and ideological predecessors, the development of event videography and home videos symbiotic relationship with television and film.
Selected book title(s)
Amateur movie making: aesthetics of the everyday in New England film, 1915-1960 by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780253026163A 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. ...
Home movies: a history of the American industry, 1897-1979 by Call Number: Baker-Berry TR 896 .K38 2000ISBN: 9780965449786... The book features chapters on amateur equipment, organizations, and collecting, and two sections are devoted to the rise of the Eastman Kodak Company. Amateur films are discussed at length, including the famous Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination. ...
Main Street movies: the history of local film in the United States by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780253032539"See yourself in the movies!" Prior to the advent of the home movie camera and the ubiquitousness of the camera phone, there was the local film. This cultural phenomenon, produced across the country from the 1890s to the 1950s, gave ordinary people a chance to be on the silver screen without leaving their hometowns. Through these movies, residents could see themselves in the same theaters where they saw major Hollywood motion pictures. ...
Michel Gondry: you'll like this film because you're in it by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1995.8 .G66 200ISBN: 9780979415388This is in inspirational guide to independent filmmaking. Inspired by his latest film, Be Kind Rewind, Gondry constructed a do-it-yourself studio at New York's Deitch Projects in 2008, in which any visitor could assemble their own film from extant plot summaries.
Three minutes in Poland by Call Number: Baker-Berry DS 134.66 .N28 K87 2014ISBN: 9780374276775When Glenn Kurtz stumbles upon an old family film in his parents' closet in Florida, he has no inkling of its historical significance or of the impact it will have on his life. The film, shot long ago by his grandfather on a sightseeing trip to Europe, includes shaky footage of Paris and the Swiss Alps, with someone inevitably waving at the camera. Astonishingly, David Kurtz also captured on color 16mm film the only known moving images of the thriving, predominantly Jewish town of Nasielsk, Poland, shortly before the community's destruction.
Zaprudered by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780292728639As the fiftieth anniversary of the Kennedy assassination approaches, the traumatic aspects of the tragedy continue to haunt our perceptions of the 1960s. One reason for this lies in the home movie of the incident filmed by Abraham Zapruder, a bystander who became one of the twentieth century's most important accidental documentarians.
Finding scholarly articles for amateur films
Articles and other writings about movies can be found in many publications. Our collection does not include a journal or magazine which looks exclusively at amateur films. Other film journals within our collection will cover amateur films. You can use Film & Television Literature Index to find relevant articles.
Film & television literature index by Call Number: Electronic resourceUse this index to find articles about amateur films.
Web of science citation databases by Call Number: Electronic resourceThe online version of 3 separate ISI indexes: Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Science Citation Index and, Social Sciences Citation Index.
Selected movie titles
Find more amateur films in the online catalog.
Amator = Camera buff by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #1919A satire on the bureaucratic society with a factory worker buying a new 8mm movie camera to record his new baby. But soon he starts recording everything he sees, much to the dismay of the local authorities.- The family album byCall Number: Streaming videoISBN: 9780982426876Utilizing a vast collection of home movies found at flea markets and yard sales, as well as oral histories and family recordings from the 1920s to the 1950s, the filmmaker weaves together a remarkable and emotionally electrifying portrait of the changing face of the American family. These authentic artifacts of American history and culture are edited together to illustrate the entire cycle of life from birth to death, from childhood to adulthood, to provide a moving experience of the universal drama of family life during the first half of the twentieth century.
Hermosa juventud by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #18935Natalia and Carlos, both aged 20, are in love and struggling to survive in today's Spain. Their limited resources prevent them from getting ahead as they'd like to. They have no great ambitions because they have no great hopes. To earn some money, they decide to shoot an amateur porno film. The birth of their daughter Julia is the main catalyst for the changes they make.
Home movies. Season oneCall Number: Jones Media DVD #13255Brendon Small is eight years old. This doesn't prevent him from referring to his short films as his "early work." Brendon documents his own inner life, along with the relationship he has with his single mom, Paula, and his neighborhood friends, Jason and Melissa, who double as cast and crew.
I for India by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #11317In 1965, Yash Pal Suri left his native India with his wife, Sheel, to follow a career in medicine in Great Britain. Suri, who was very close to his family, bought a Super-8 movie camera so he could shoot film of his new surroundings and send them home, allowing his friends and relations to see how he was doing. Years later, Suri's amateur films have become the basis for a documentary by his daughter Sandhya Suri, which tells the story of her family as well as the often rocky road for Indian expatriates in the United Kingdom. As Yash and Sheel had three daughters and made a home in England, the growing number of Indian immigrants became a subject of great controversy with the rise of the extreme right-wing National Front in the 1970s. Fearing for the safety of their son and his family, Yash's parents began pressuring him to return to India, but his decision to abide by their wishes in 1982 creates a whole new set of problems for himself, his wife, and his children.- Orphans 8: a collection of orphan films byCall Number: Jones Media DVD #16079In an era when radical change in modes of production and platforms of exhibition has exploded many people's concept of cinema and media studies, the Orphan Film Symposium invites us on a voyage of discovery and redefinition. This series of symposia displays and celebrates the inherent variety and unpredictable nature of the moving image as our modern mode of communication, transformation, and delight. ...
Swastika by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #15262This film uses home movie footage shot by Eva Braun, Nazi propaganda films, and other film footage of Germany in the 1930s and 1940s to document how Hitler and the Germans viewed themselves and wished themselves to be seen.
Unseen cinema: early American avant-garde film, 1894-1941 by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #4344Disc 6. The amateur as actor: discovering paradise in pictures.
We're in movies: palace of silents and itinerant filmmaking by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #18530ISBN: 9781893967861Two documentaries plus bonus films. "When you wore a tulip and I wore a big red rose" is about itinerant fimmakers who travelled from town to town making "local talent" pictures. "Palace of silents" is about the silent movie theatre in Los Angeles built in 1942 and run by John Hampton. Bonus films are six early examples of itinerant filmmaking in the United States.
