Amateur 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. She draws on an array of sources-camera manufacturers, patents, early film and photography technology journals, amateur filmmaking magazines, professional magazines, and family-oriented popular magazines-to investigate how the concept of amateur film was transformed within evolving contexts of technology, aesthetics, social relations, and politics.
| ISBN: | 9780253209443 |
| Publication date: | 22nd July 1995 |
| Author: | Patricia R Zimmermann |
| Publisher: | Indiana University Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 208 pages |
| Series: | Arts and Politics of the Everyday |
| Genres: |
Films, cinema Social and cultural anthropology |
Amateur 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. She draws on an array of sources-camera manufacturers, patents, early film and photography technology journals, amateur filmmaking magazines, professional magazines, and family-oriented popular magazines-to investigate how the concept of amateur film was transformed within evolving contexts of technology, aesthetics, social relations, and politics.
Reel Families features in the following genres: Films, cinema, Social and cultural anthropology
Reel Families is available in Paperback
Reel Families was written by Patricia R Zimmermann and published by Indiana University Press
Reel Families has 208 pages
Yes it is part of Arts and Politics of the Everyday series