Amateur Movie Making ─ Aesthetics of the Everyday in New England Film, 1915?960

A 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. Here we encounter the lyrical and visually expressive qualities of films produced in New England between 1915 and 1960 and held in the collections of Northeast Historic Film, a moving image repository and study center that was established to collect, preserve, and interpret the audiovisual record of northern New England. Contributors from diverse backgrounds examine the visual aesthetics of these films while placing them in their social, political, and historical contexts. Each discussion is enhanced by technical notes and the analyses are also juxtaposed with personal reflections by artists who have close connections to particular amateur filmmakers. These reflections reanimate the original private contexts of the home movies before they were recast as objects of study and artifacts of public history.

Martha J. McNamara is Director of the New England Arts and Architecture Program in the Department of Art at Wellesley College. She is the author of From Tavern to Courthouse: Architecture and Ritual in American Law, 1658-1860, and co-editor with Georgia Barnhill of New Views of New England: Studies in Material and Visual Culture, 1680-1830.

Karan Sheldon is Co-founder of northern New England’s moving image archive, Northeast Historic Film. She has curated screenings including You Work, We’ll Watch and Exceptional Amateur Films and given annual lectures in Regional and Nontraditional Moving Image Archiving for the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation, Rochester, NY.