Amateur Filmmaking: The Home Movie, the Archive, the Web

392 Pages·2014·1.48 MB·English

by  Laura Rascaroli

Amateur
Filmmaking

Amateur
Filmmaking
The Home Movie, the Archive, the Web
EDITED BY LAURA RASCAROLI
AND GWENDA YOUNG,
WITH BARRY MONAHAN
Bloomsbury Academic
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Bloomsbury is a registered trade mark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published 2014
© Laura Rascaroli, Gwenda Young, Barry Monahan, and Contributors 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or
any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the
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No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining
from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or
the author.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN: ePDF: 978-1-4411-0193-8
Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solitions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN
Contents
Contributors ix
Introduction. Amateur Filmmaking: New Developments and Directions 1
Laura Rascaroli, Gwenda Young, Barry Monahan
PART ONE Reframing the Home Movie
13
1 The Home Movie and Space of Communication 15
Roger Odin
2 Home Movies and Amateur Film as National Cinema 27
Liz Czach
3 The Photographic Hangover: Reconsidering the Aesthetics of
the Postwar 8mm Home Movie 39
Maija Howe
4 Amateur Film, Automobility and the Cinematic Aesthetics of
Leisure 51
Mark Neumann
PART TWO Private Reels, Historiographical Concerns
65
5 Cinemas of Catastrophe and Continuity: Mapping Out
Twentieth-Century Amateur Practices of Intentional History-
Making in Northern England 67
Heather Norris Nicholson
vi CONTENTS
6 Glimpses of a Hidden History: Exploring Irish Amateur
Collections, 1930–70 81
Gwenda Young
7 Uncensored British Imperial Politics in Late Colonial Home
Movies: Memsahibs, Indian Bearers and Chinese Communist
Insurgents 95
Annamaria Motrescu-Mayes
8 The Amateur Film: From Artifact to Anecdote 109
Karen Lury
9 Starring Sally Peshlakai: Rewriting the Script for Tad Nichols’s
1939 Navajo Rug Weaving 123
Janna Jones
PART THREE Nonfictional Recontextualizations
137
10 Change of Scale: Home Movies as Microhistory in Documentary
Films 139
Efrén Cuevas
11 Creating Historiography: Alan Gilsenan’s Formal Reframing of
Amateur Archival Footage in Home Movie Nights 153
Barry Monahan
12 “That would be wrong”: Errol Morris and his Use of Home
Movies (as Metalanguages) in Feature Documentaries 163
Stefano Odorico
PART FOUR Amateur Auteur
177
13 “I am a time archaeologist”: Some Reflections on the
Filmmaking Practice of Péter Forgács 179
Richard Kilborn
CONTENTS vii
14 Representing the Past and the Meaning of Home in Péter
Forgács’s Private Hungary 193
Ruth Balint
15 Necessity Is the Mother of Invention, or Morder’s Amateur
Toolkit 207
Dominique Bluher
16 Joseph Morder, the “Filmateur”: An Interview with Joseph
Morder 223
Dominique Bluher
17 Working at Home: Tarnation, Amateur Authorship, and Self-
Inscription in the Digital Age 229
Laura Rascaroli
PART FIVE New Directions: The Digital Age
243
18 Saving Private Reels: Archival Practices and Digital Memories
(Formerly Known as Home Movies) in the Digital Age 245
Susan Aasman
19 The Home Movie Archive Live 257
Patricia R. Zimmermann
20 An Inward Gaze at Home: Amateur First Person DV
Documentary Filmmaking in Twenty-First Century China 271
Tianqi Yu
21 Shooting for Profit: The Monetary Logic of the YouTube Home
Movie 289
Lauren S. Berliner
viii CONTENTS
22 Home Movies in the Age of Web 2.0: The Case of “Star Wars
Kid” 301
Abigail Keating
23 Towards Mobile Filmmaking 2.0: Amateur Filmmaking as an
Alternative Cultural Practice 315
Max Schleser
Works Cited 329
Audiovisual Sources 351
Index 359
Contributors
Susan Aasman is a Senior Lecturer in the History Department and the
Department of Arts, Culture, and Media at the University of Groningen,
the Netherlands. She has written several books and articles on the history
of home movies. She is currently working on a large international research
project on “Changing platforms of ritualized memory practices. The cultural
dynamics of home movies” (http://homemoviesproject.wordpress.com/).
Ruth Balint is a senior lecturer in History in the School of Humanities
and Languages at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.
Her writing and documentaries have addressed transnational histories of
immigration, borders, documentary film, and contemporary Australian history.
She is the author of Troubled Waters: Borders, Boundaries and Possession
in the Timor Sea (Allen and Unwin, 2005). Her documentaries include
Troubled Waters for SBS Television and The Unknown Man for the Australian
Broadcasting Commission.
Lauren S. Berliner is a filmmaker and Assistant Professor of Media and
Communication and Cultural Studies in the school of Interdisciplinary Arts and
Sciences at University of Washington Bothell. She is currently working on a
book based on her research involving queer youth, self-produced media, and
pedagogy, and is co-curator of The Festival of (In)Appropriation.
Dominique Bluher studied in Berlin, and received her Ph.D. in film studies
from Université de Paris 3. Prior to her appointment at the University of
Chicago, she has been Lecturer in the Department of Visual and Environmental
Studies at Harvard, and Maître de conférences at the Université Rennes 2.
She coedited two anthologies devoted to French nonfiction short films in the
1950s and 1960s, and her publications on French film theory, French cinema,
and autobiographical filmmaking have appeared in many international journals
of film theory. She is currently completing a book on Joseph Morder – le
filmateur (forthcoming 2014), and working on a book on autobiography in
cinema, Framing the I: Film and Autobiography.