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.
- “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)
