Middlebrow Cultures Conference Glasgow 14-15 July 2009 Researching The Middlebrow: Resources and Archives ‘Neither Fanatical nor Lukewarm: Amateur Cinema.

Middlebrow Cultures ConferenceGlasgow 14-15 July 2009

Researching The Middlebrow: Resources and Archives

‘Neither Fanatical nor Lukewarm:Amateur Cinema as Middlebrow

Culture’

Ian CravenUniversity of Glasgow

Pathé 9.5mm “Baby” camera (introduced 1924)

Cine-Kodak Model B 16mm camera (introduced 1923)

1. New ‘Sub-standard’ technologies

Pathescope ‘Ace’ projectors (displayed in the museum of the Bath & District Cine Club)

(published 1933-1963)

2. Hobby Literature

(1932-1940)

(in assoc. with the Institute of Amateur Cinematographers)

(1928-1930)

(in assoc. with British Association of Amateur Cinematographers)

(1934-1967) (1956-1964)

3. Defining Discourses

‘two fallacies about film-making irritate me quite a lot. I’m going to call them the Highbrow Fallacy and the Lowbrow Fallacy … I have little patience with this Highbrow fallacy, this attitude which condemns a film as “not filmic” because there’s no obvious virtuosity…

…The Lowbrow fallacy isn’t so dangerous but it’s just as stupid. Its symptoms are the use of expressions like “the long-haired boys”, “arty-crafty types” and “gloomy social prophets”… [from] the 8mm man who runs off reels of Kodachrome in his garden…

…Good films are neither highbrow nor lowbrow, although bad films frequently deserve the one condemnation or the other…’

Jack Smith: ‘The Highbrow and The Lowbrow Fallacy’, Amateur Cine World, Vol. 22, No. 11 (March 1959), pp. 1122-1123.

‘their movies have stories running through them, because they believe that shooting without any plan is a sheer waste of time and money… Wallace admits frankly that not all have been successful and remembers especially putting a lot of time and effort into the production of a film about local history called The Charter with indifferent results… [Wallace’s] greatest individual triumph was North of The Great Glen, which won the novice prize in the Scottish Amateur Film Festival of 1956…

In short, I would sum them up as a happy little family, in which movies fit neatly and logically into place. Quite the average “Mr and Mrs Movie-Maker” in fact. They are not fanatical about the hobby, but they realise sensibly that what they get out of it depends on the amount of effort and patience they are prepared to invest…’

David Alwyn: ‘Middle-of-the Road Man: Neither fanatical nor lukewarm, Wallace Hall’s approach to movie-making is that of the average family man’, Amateur Movie Maker, Vol. 2, No. 7 (July 1959), p. 351.

4. Archive Resources – Amateur Cinema

Scottish Screen Archive National Library of Scotland39-41 Montrose AvenueHillington ParkGlasgow G5 4LA Curator: Janet McBain E-mail: [email protected]: http://ssa.nls.uk/ Coverage: The nation of Scotland (esp. Scottish Amateur Film Festival Collection)

East Anglian Film Archive The Archive CentreMartineau LaneNorwich NR1 2DQ University of East AngliaNorwich NR4 7TJ Director: Richard Taylor E-mail: [email protected]: www.uea.ac.uk/eafa Coverage: The East Anglian region, including Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk (esp. IAC collections)

The Film Archive Forum

The Film Archive Forum represents all of the public sector film and television archives which care for the UK's moving image heritage. It represents the UK's public sector moving image archives in all archival aspects of the moving image, and acts as the advisory body on national moving image archive policy.

The Film Archive Forum (FAF) was established in 1987 with the object of fostering an informal network of British moving image archives. Four archives sent representatives to the first meeting, but the Forum now contains eleven institutional members, representing all the national and regional film archives of the UK. Full membership remains institutional, although others can be invited to attend Forum meetings as Observing Members. Current FAF Observer members are the British Library, the British Universities Film & Video Council (BUFVC), the Irish Film Institute, the Northern Ireland Film and Television Commission, the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), The National Archives and the National Council on Archives.

See: www.bufvc.ac.uk/faf/aboutus.htm