NEWS

2005 Symposium

Amateur Fiction Films

July 21-23, 2005

An examination of the fine line (if any) between amateurs and artists, the symposium featured presenters from Anthology Film Archives, the Academy Film Archive, The Center for Home Movies, and more.

Use the menu above to visit pages with essays by the presenters.

2005 Symposium presenters are listed below:

Robbins Barstow, Director of Professional Development for the Connecticut Education Associationretired
Amateur Fiction Filmmaking as a Family Bond 

Michel BeaulieuPh.D. Student, History, Queen’s University
Amateur Cinema Comes to Canada: Dorothea Mitchell and the Port Arthur Amateur Cinema Society

Snowden BeckerPublic Access Coordinator, Academy Film Archive
Chinese American Filmmaking in the Shadow of Old Hollywood 

 

Tony DowmuntDepartment of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths College
An Autobiographical, Fictional Home Movie in its Personal and Historical Context 

Ron HarpelleAssociate Professor and Chair, Department of History, Lakehead University
The Fatal Flower Project: Bringing Back a Piece Of Canada’s Filmmaking Heritage 

Alan Kattelle, Author, Home Movies: A History of the American Industry, 1897-1979
Getting to Know the Cameras That Made These Films 

Lynne KirsteSpecial Collections Curator, Academy Film Archive
A Comparison of Amateur Comedic Fiction Films Made by Film Industry Professionals and “Regular Folks”  

Andrew Lampert, Archivist, Anthology Film Archives
Small Gauge / Big Laughs: Kuchar Brothers Preserved 

Ross Lipman*UCLA Film and Television Archive
Sid Laverents’ It Sudses, and Sudses…and Sudses!
*unable to attend

Andrea McCarty,  Graduate Student, Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Mission: Alpha Centauri: The Making of a Smalltown, Sci-Fi Classic

William O’FarrellFormer Chief of Moving Image and Sound Conservation, National Archives of Canada
Dent Harrison’s The Highway of Tomorrow or How One Makes Two (1930) 

Bruce PosnerFilmmaker and Historian
The Amateur as Auteur: Watson, Huff, Card, and Bradley 

Dwight Swanson, Center for Home Movies
Moderator, Amateur Fiction Films

Charles Tepperman and Nancy WatrousChicago Film Archives
The Films of Margaret Conneely, Chicago’s “First Lady of Amateur Film”

Toni Treadway, Brodsky & Treadway
Sagecoach, Wyo., 1940 by Charles Guggenheim (Grace Guggenheim also present)