Storytelling in film has never been an activity confined to the domain of the professional movie maker. Ever since the introduction of small-gauge equipment in the 1920s, numerous amateur ‘lone workers’, independent-minded collectives, and more leisure-oriented clubs have attempted to create fictional worlds through film. Working across a wide range of genres, and addressing controversial topics as well as lighter-hearted themes, the resulting output remains largely unexplored by a film history which has tended to privilege the cine enthusiast’s engagement with films of record, or ventures ont ... More

Storytelling in film has never been an activity confined to the domain of the professional movie maker. Ever since the introduction of small-gauge equipment in the 1920s, numerous amateur ‘lone workers’, independent-minded collectives, and more leisure-oriented clubs have attempted to create fictional worlds through film. Working across a wide range of genres, and addressing controversial topics as well as lighter-hearted themes, the resulting output remains largely unexplored by a film history which has tended to privilege the cine enthusiast’s engagement with films of record, or ventures onto more experimental terrains. In this context, Small-Gauge Storytelling pioneers new approaches to amateur film practice, the imaginative horizons of its surrounding ‘social world’, and the distinctive forms and aesthetics favoured by the non-professional maker of movie dramas, comedies and thrillers. Contributors raise a series of recurrent questions. What can amateur fiction films bring to our sense of the cinematic past? What has the significance of such enterprises been for their producers and audiences? How might attention to the amateur filmmaker’s work in fiction inform critical debates concerning the social meaning of such movie-making more generally? These concerns and others are explored in depth by Small-Gauge Storytelling, which brings together international perspectives and localised case studies to re-examine some of the forgotten ways and means by which amateur filmmakers have created often remarkable fictional worlds. Covering a broad range of historical eras, identifying amateur takes on several different genres and recognising diverse production methods, its contributors demonstrate the importance of amateur film-making beyond the ‘home movie’, and illustrate often intimate relationships between amateur and professional film history.