Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

At home and abroad with cine enthusiasts: Regional amateur filmmaking and visualizing the Mediterranean, ca. 1928–1962.

  • Published:
GeoJournal Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

After the appearance of a portable Kodak cine camera in 1923, home moving making grew steadily in popularity in the years leading up to and following World War II. Cine enthusiasts, particularly in the pre-war period, tended to be male, white and middle class, although exceptions exist, and they tended to travel with their cameras much as earlier generations had documented their experiences in written and artistic form. Despite their amateur status, they were often very professional in their approach to cinematography and they produced material for a range of domestic and public audiences on varied topics and in different genres. Specialist publications and the rapid growth of local amateur film societies fostered the rise of an active non-professional film movement; the result is a highly distinctive although neglected component of film history. With reference to materials held at the North West Film Archives in Manchester, England, this discussion considers the rise of non-professional filmmaking at the regional level during the decades before and after the second world war. Making and showing home movies is placed within various socio-cultural contexts. The imagery discloses much about visual practice, including filmmakers' perceptions and their relationships with different kinds of subject matter. The making of holiday footage, in Mediterranean settings, and its subsequent screening in domestic or public places, connects with broader issues of visualization, social practice and leisure-related consumption.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Aitken S.C., 1997: Review essay. Contesting the mobilized virtual gaze, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 15: 113–126.

    Google Scholar 

  • Aldgate A. and Richards J., 1999: Best of British. Cinema and Society from 1930 to the Present. I.B. Tauris, London and New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Becker S., 2001: Family in a can. The presentation and preservation of home movies in museums, The Moving Image 1(2): 88–106.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu P., 1990: Photography: A Middle Brow Art (trans. S. Whiteside). Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brunner E. 1945: Holiday Making and the Holiday Trades. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

    Google Scholar 

  • Buzard J., 1993: The Beaten Track. European Tourism, Literature and the Ways to Culture, 1800-1918. Clarendon Press, Oxford.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chalfren R., 1987: Snapshot Versions of Life. Bowling Green State University Popular Press, Bowling Green, Ohio.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chambers D., 2003: Family as place: Family photograph albums and the domestication of public and private space. In: Schwartz J.M. and Ryan J.R. (eds), Picturing Place. Photography and the Geographical Imagination, pp. 96–114. I.B. Tauris, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chard C., 1999: Pleasure and Guilt on the Grand Tour. Travel Writing and Imaginative Geographies, 1600-1830. Manchester University Press, Manchester.

    Google Scholar 

  • Citrone M., 1999: Home Movies and Other Necessary Fictions. University of Minneapolis Press, Minneapolis, MN.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clarke D.B., 1996: Consumption and the City. Modern and Postmodern. Working Paper 96/10, School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds.

    Google Scholar 

  • Compton M., 2003: Small-gauge and amateur film bibliography. Film History 15(2): 252–271.

    Google Scholar 

  • Conrad P., 1999: Modern Times, Modern Places. Life and Art in the 20th Century. Thames and Hudson, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Constantine S., 1983: Social Conditions in Britain, 1918-1939. Methuen, London and New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cooke L., 1999: British cinema. In: Nelmes J. (ed.), An Introduction to Film Studies, pp. 348–380. Routledge, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Denzin N., 1995: The Cinematic Society: The Voyeur's Gaze. Sage, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Edwards E., 1999: Photographs as objects of memory. In: Kwint M., Breward C. and Aynsley J. (eds), Material Memories. Design and Evocation, pp. 221–236. Berg, Oxford.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ellam S., 2001: Sixty years with Standard Eight, Part One. Tripod (North West Region of the Film and Video Institute) 122: 6–9.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foster J., 2003: Capturing and losing the 'Lie of the Land': Railway photography and colonial nationalism in early twentieth century South Africa. In: Schwartz J.M. and Ryan J.R. (eds), Picturing Place. Photography and the Geographical Imagination pp. 141–161. I.B. Tauris, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Friedberg A., 1993: Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gale A.L. and Pessels K., 1939: Make Your Own Movies For Fun and Profit. Coward-McCann, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gregory D. 2003: Emperors of the gaze: Photographic practices and productions of space in Egypt, 1839-1914. In: Schwartz J.M. and Ryan J.R. (eds), Picturing Place. Photography and the Geographical Imagination, pp. 195–225. I.B. Tauris, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Higson A., 1995: Waving the Flag: Constructing a National Cinema in Britain. Clarendon Press, Oxford.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hirsch M., 1997: Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hollis A.P., 1927: Movies at home. Amateur Movie Makers 2: 4–11.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jacobs M., 1995: The Painted Voyage. Art, Travel and Exploration, 1564-1875. British Museum Press, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kaplan A.E., 1997: Looking for the Other. Feminism, Film and the Imperial Gaze. Routledge, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kapstein N. (ed.), 1997: Jubilee Book. Essays on Amateur Film. Association Européenne Inédits, Charleroi.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kattelle A.D., 2003: The Amateur Cinema League and its films. Film History 15(2): 238–251.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kidd A. and Nicholls D. (eds), 1996: Gender, Civic Identity and Consumerism. Manchester, Manchester University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • King N., 2000: Memory, Narrative, Identity. Remembering the Self. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lawrie J.P., 1933: The Home Cinema. Chapman and Hall, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • MacCannell D., 1973: Staged authenticity: Arrangements of social space in tourist settings. American Sociological Review 79: 589–603.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • MacCannell D., 1999: The Tourist, Schocken. New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • MacCannell D., 1992: Empty Meeting Grounds. Routledge, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • McKernan L., 1993: The Supreme Moment of the War: General Allenby's Entry into Jerusalem. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 13(2): 169–180.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mulvey L., 1989: Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. In: Mulvey L. (ed.), Visual and Other Pleasures, pp. 14–26. Macmillan, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Norris Nicholson H., 1997a: In amateur hands: framing time and space in home movies. History Workshop Journal 43: 198–212.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Norris Nicholson H., 1997b: Moving memories: image and identity in home movies. In: Kapstein N. (ed.), The Jubilee Book. Essays on Amateur Film, pp. 35–44. Association Européene des Inédits, Charleroi.

    Google Scholar 

  • Norris Nicholson H., 2001a: Regionally specific, globally significant: Who's responsible for the regional record? The Moving Image 1(2): 152–163.

    Google Scholar 

  • Norris Nicholson H., 2001b: Seeing how it was?: Childhood geographies and memories in home movies. Area 33(2): 128–140.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Norris Nicholson H., 2001c: Two tales of a city: Salford in regional filmmaking, 1957-1973. Manchester Regional History Review 15: 41–53.

    Google Scholar 

  • Norris Nicholson H., 2002a: Picturing the past: Archival film and historical landscape change. Landscapes 3(1): 81–100.

    Google Scholar 

  • Norris Nicholson H., 2002b: Telling travellers' tales: the world through home movies, 1935-1967. In: Cresswell T. and Dixon D. (eds), Engaging Film: Travel, Mobility and Identity, pp. 47–66. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, ML.

    Google Scholar 

  • Norris Nicholson H., 2003a: British home movies of the Mediterranean, ca. 1925-1936. Film History 15(2): 152–165.

    Google Scholar 

  • Norris Nicholson H. (ed.), 2003b: Screening Culture: Constructing Image and Identity. Lexington, Lanham, ML.

    Google Scholar 

  • Norris Nicholson H., 2004: 'As if by magic': authority, aesthetics and visions of the work place in home movies. In: Ishizuka K. and Zimmerman P. (eds), Mining the Home Movie: Excavations into Historical and Cultural Memories. University of California Press, Los Angeles.

    Google Scholar 

  • Osborne B., 2003: Constructing the state. Managing the Corporation, Transforming the individual: Photography, immigration and Canadian national railways, 1925-30. In: Schwartz J.M. and Ryan J.R. (eds), Picturing Place. Photography and the Geographical Imagination, pp. 162–191. I.B. Tauris, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ottley D., 1935: Making Home Movies. George Newnes. London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pelizzari M.A., 2003: Retracing the outlines of Rome. Intertextuality and imaginative geographies in nineteenth century photographs. In: Schwartz J.M. and Ryan J.R. (eds), Picturing Place. Photography and the Geographical Imagination, pp. 55–73. I.B. Tauris, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pemble J., 1987: The Mediterranean Passion: Victorians and Edwardians in the South. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pratt G., 1992: Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation. Routledge, London and New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ryan J.R., 1997: Picturing Empire. Photography and the Visualization of the British Empire. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ryan J., 1995: Imperial landscapes: Photography, geography and British overseas exploration, 1785-1872. In: Bell M., Butlin R. and Heffernan M. (eds), Geography and Imperialism, 1820-1940, pp. 53–79. Manchester University Press, Manchester.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ryskind M., Stevens C.F. and Englander J., 1927: The Home Movie Scenario Book. Richard Manson, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Said E., 1978: Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. Penguin, Harmondsworth.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schivelbusch W., 1986: The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century. Berg, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schneider A., 2003: Home movie making and Swiss expatriate identities in the 1920s and 1930s. Film History 15(2), 166–176.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schwartz J.M. and Ryan J.R., 2003: Photography and the geographical imagination. In: Schwartz J.M. and Ryan J.R. (eds), Picturing Place. Photography and the Geographical Imagination, pp. 1–18. I.B. Tauris, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sontag S., 1979: On Photography. Penguin, Harmondsworth.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stone M. and Streible D., 2003: Small-gauge and amateur film. Film History 15(2): 123–125.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Strasser A., 1936: Amateur Films. Planning, Directing, Cutting. (Trans. from German by P.C. Smethurst), Link House Publications, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Taylor P.M., 1993: Introduction: Britain and the cinema in the first world war. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 13(2): 115–116.

    Google Scholar 

  • Towner J., 1996: An Historical Geography of Recreation & Tourism, 1540-1940. John Wiley, Chichester.

    Google Scholar 

  • Urry J., 1995: Consuming Places. Routledge, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Urry J., 2002: The Tourist Gaze. Second Edition. Sage, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wain G., 1949: How to Film as an Amateur. Focal Press, London and New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walton J., 2000: The British Seaside. Manchester University Press, Manchester.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wijk P. van (ed.), 1994: You Can't See What You Don't Know. Amateur Film as Evidence, Association Européenne Inédits, Charleroi/Film Research Foundation SFW, Amersterdam. [Reprinted 1996].

    Google Scholar 

  • Zimmerman P., 1995: Reel Families. Indiana University Press, Bloomington.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Meltham, Holmfirth, HD9 5JE, West Yorkshire, U.K.

    Heather Norris Nicholson

Authors
  1. Heather Norris Nicholson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Nicholson, H.N. At home and abroad with cine enthusiasts: Regional amateur filmmaking and visualizing the Mediterranean, ca. 1928–1962.. GeoJournal 59, 323–333 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:GEJO.0000026705.38944.5c

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:GEJO.0000026705.38944.5c

Search

Navigation