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.

• "Amateur Fiction Filmmaking as a Family Bond," by Robbins Barstow
• "Lawrence, Me and the Sheep," by Tony Dowmunt
• "A Comparison of Amateur Comedic Fiction Made by Film Industry Professionals and 'Regular Folks,'" by Lynne Kirste
• "Sid Laverents' It Sudses, and Sudses...and Sudses!," by Ross Lipman
• "Mission: Alpha Centauri: The Making of a Small Town, Sci-Fi Classic," by Andrea McCarty
• "Introduction to Amateur Fiction Films Symposium," by Dwight Swanson
• "Sagecoach, Wyo., 1940," by Toni Treadway
• "Chicago's First Lady of Amateur Film," by Charles Tepperman & Nancy Watrous

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 Association, retired

Amateur Fiction Filmmaking as a Family Bond

Michel Beaulieu

Ph.D. Student, History, Queen's University

Amateur Cinema Comes to Canada: Dorothea Mitchell and the Port Arthur Amateur Cinema Society

Snowden Becker

Public Access Coordinator, Academy Film Archive

Chinese American Filmmaking in the Shadow of Old Hollywood

Tony Dowmunt

Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths College

An Autobiographical, Fictional Home Movie in its Personal and Historical Context

Ron Harpelle

Associate 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 Kirste

Special 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’Farrell

Former 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 Posner

Filmmaker 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 Watrous

Chicago 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)