This thesis, Amateur Cinema: History, Theory, and Genre (1930-1980), draws largely on primary material from the Scottish Screen Archive and related museum sources. The project establishes a critical dialogue between university-based Film Studies and the archive sector, via a series of case studies of influential groups, individuals, and movements. Prefaced by a chapter entitled 'Theorising Amateur Film: Limitations and Possibilities' detailing the domination of amateur cinema studies by discussion of the 'home mode', I suggest that work to date has obscured an understanding of films made by cine-clubs within the highly organised film culture of the British amateur cine movement. The main body of the thesis consists of four chapters exploring the most popular generic practices of 'institutionalised' amateur filmmakers, focusing on: art cinema, the 'film play', community filmmaking, and the amateur heritage picture. I argue that these production strands were formed by discourses circulating within amateur film journals, 'how to do it' manuals and amateur film festivals. Amateur cinema was viewed throughout as a parallel cine movement existing alongside professional practices, enjoying an ambivalent relationship to inherited professional standards. The final chapter, 'Amateur Film Re-Located', proposed a fresh theorisation of 'local' amateur production within a national film culture, marked by distinctly cosmopolitan connections.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:520615 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Shand, Ryan John |
| Publisher | University of Glasgow |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://theses.gla.ac.uk/4923/ |
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