View the Amateur Film Preservation Timeline online as a PDF file

Amateur film preservation in the context of the Association of Moving Image Archivists
An amateur industrial,
From Stump to Ship,
16mm restoration funded
by Maine Humanities
Council. In 1986 Northeast
Historic Film founded.
Cineric donates 35mm
preservation 2002, NHF
exhibits new print at the
Library of Congress in
2003 and MOMA in 2005.
In 2004 Janna Jones’s
article on the film in AMIA
journal The Moving Image.
Bob Brodsky and Toni
Treadway publish filmmakers’ manual, Super
8 in the Video Age.
1982-85 NEA National
Services grants
awarded to B & T to
tour media arts centers
to help small-gauge
artists.
East Anglian Film Archive Masters Course
starts; David Cleveland founded the Archive
in 1976—holdings include family and personal films and videos.
Photo courtesy Jane Alvey.
The US Holocaust Memorial
Museum in Washington, DC,
opens. Raye Farr developed
exhibition videos; amateur film
is part of the archival and interpretive record.
Publication of book,
Reel Families: A Social
History of Amateur Film
by Patricia Zimmermann
(from a 1984 Ph.D. dissertation). At the AMIA
conference in Toronto
her plenary, Democracy
and Cinema: A History
of Amateur Film, is part
of the centennial of cinema series.
Publication of book,
Lovers of Cinema: The
First American Film AvantGarde 1919-1945, by
Jan-Christopher Horak in
which he discusses earliest
avant-garde filmmakers and
also the Amateur Cinema
League.
Publication of
Jubilee Book,
Essays on
amateur film by
l’Association
Européenne
Inédits.
New York Women in Film & Television’s
Women’s Film Preservation Fund
(WFPF) first year, makes amateur film
preservation grant to the Southern
Media Archive. Karen Glynn preserves
Emma Lytle’s Raisin’ Cotton (19381941). WFPF later supports amateur
film preservation at NHF and the Louis
Wolfson II Media History Center. www.
nywift.org
Getty Research Institute
symposium organized
by Karen Ishizuka,
The Past as Present:
The Home Movies as
a Cinema of Record.
Genesis of book in
press, Mining the Home
Movie: Excavations into
Historical and Cultural
Memories edited by
Karen Ishizuka and
Patricia Zimmermann.
Big as Life: An
American History
of 8mm Films, Jytte
Jensen, MoMA,
and Steve Anker,
SF Cinematheque,
1998-2001 exhibition
and catalog.
Small Gauge Film Symposium with four
days of workshops, screenings, and presentations related to film of all kinds on
small gauges in Portland, Oregon, as part
of the AMIA annual conference.
Photo courtesy Janice Simpson, AMIA
NFPF receives funding
for Treasures of American
Film Archives, includes
amateur film from
Japanese American
National Museum,
Minnesota Historical
Society, National
Museum of American
History,Northeast Historic
Film, West Virginia State
Archives. The four-DVD set
is reissued in 2005.
First Orphans Film Preservation
Symposium at the University
of South Carolina, Saving
Orphan Films in the Digital Age
organized by Dan Streible. A
screening, A Home for Home
Movies, with Alan Berliner and
Péter Forgács.
Orphans II, Documenting the 20th Century,
includes Nico De Klerk, Netherlands
Filmmuseum, with Dutch East Indies amateur film, and panel with Melinda Stone on
California Amateur Film Clubs; Karen Glynn,
Mississippi Mule Race Movies; Andrea
McCarty, Making The Movie Queen. Greg
Lukow gives a paper on the history of the
Orphan metaphor.
Photo courtesy Dan Streible
Home Movies and Privacy,
NHF’s second annual symposium, presenters Patricia
Zimmermann, Mark Neumann,
Eric Schwartz, and Eric
Schaefer. In the first year
William O’Farrell, Chief
of Moving Image & Audio
Conservation at the National
Archives of Canada, spoke on
the Amateur Cinema League,
with a 1939 Hiram Percy
Maxim Memorial Award globe.
New Zealand Film
Archive exhibition,
8Super8 with 8mm
and Super 8 cameras, projectors.
Karen Shopsowitz produces My Father’s
Camera, www.nfb.ca/fatherscamera
Publication of Alan
Kattelle’s book, Home
Movies: A History of the
American Industry, 1897
– 1979, currently selling on
Amazon.com for $210 and
more affordably at www.
homemoviehistory.com
The Reel Thing X: Laboratory
Technical Symposium in LA,
Toni Treadway presents
Topaz, Cineric’s 8mm film
to 35mm blowup; an excerpt
of 1930s Czech home movies copied to PAL DigiBeta
and thence to 35mm; William
O’Farrell presents 9.5mm work
including Hints, a Pathex film.
Unseen Cinema: Early
American Avant-Garde
Film shows at Moscow
International Film Festival
and Whitney Museum
of American Art; organized by Anthology Film
Archives and Deutsches
Filmmuseum.
L. Jeffrey Selznick School,
Rochester, NY, Dwight
Swanson lectures students
on small gauge and amateur
film and regional archives. The
preservation school began in
1996; every year since 1997
an invited speaker from NHF
lectures and screens amateur
and regional film.
2002
2001
2000
The Reel Thing IX:
Laboratory Technical
Symposium Montreal,
Toni Treadway presents
8mm Logging in the
High Sierras (1939) and
a sound 8mm film held by
the Smithsonian Human
Studies Film Archive,
Native American dancing
in New Mexico.
AMIA’s Small Gauge and
Amateur Film interest group created to continue work begun by
Small Gauge Task Force and
Inédits interest group; chair,
Snowden Becker.
Library of Congress and
National Film Preservation
Board fund AMIAconvened Roundtable
on Small Gauge Film
Preservation, hosted by
Grover Crisp at Sony, to
advance the US National
Film Preservation Plan by
collaborating on selecting
and preserving amateur
and small gauge film.
Photo courtesy Janice
Simpson, AMIA
First international Home
Movie Day (sponsored
by AMIA): meet film
archivists, learn longevity
benefits of film, see family films.
www.homemovieday.com
HMD was organized
in 2002 by Snowden
Becker, Bryan
Graney, Chad Hunter,
Dwight Swanson, Katie
Trainor.
2003
AMIA Montreal conference, group screening,
The Richness of the
Regions: Projecting a
Global Picture of the
Twentieth Century.
1999
1997
1998
National Film
Preservation Foundation,
charitable affiliate
of the National Film
Preservation Board, gives
first Laboratory-Archive
Partnership grants; recipients include Smithsonian
Institution (Groucho Marx
Home Movies); Northeast
Historic Film (Albert
Benedict Home Movies);
Southern Media Archive
(Thomas Collection).
Fédération Internationale des Archives
du Film (FIAF) conference in Cartagena,
Colombia, symposium Out of the Attic:
Archiving Amateur Film. FIAF Journal of
Film Preservation preceded meeting with
an Open Forum on amateur film and
followed in 1998 with Jan-Christopher
Horak’s article about the symposium—
on taking amateur cinema seriously.
Formation of AMIA
Amateur Materials
working group.
In 1993 name
becomes Inédits
interest group.
Chairs Pam Wintle,
Karen Ishizuka,
Micheline Morisset.
Publication of the Report of
the Librarian of Congress,
Film Preservation 1993: A
Study of the Current State of
American Film Preservation.
Written submissions from
these archives focused on
home movies: Japanese
American National Museum,
Oregon Historical Society,
Northeast Historic Film.
The National Film
Preservation Act,
1996 version, reauthorizes the National Film
Preservation Board
(NFPB) for seven years
and creates the federally chartered private
sector National Film
Preservation Foundation.
AMIA gets a seat on the
NFPB.
1996
1995
1993
1992
1991
1990
Association of
Moving Image
Archivists (AMIA)
emerges out of
the Film/
Television
Archives
Advisory
Committee.
Création à Paris
de l’Association
Européenne Inédits.
(Unpublished, i.e.,
personal or amateur
film)
1994
The first annual
conference of AMIA
takes place in New
York, there is an
amateur film panel:
Stephen Gong,
Micheline Morriset,
Karen Ishizuka,
Pam Wintle.
Fast
Rewind:
The
Archaeology of Moving Images
conference in Rochester,
NY, panel on home movies includes filmmaker Alan
Berliner and NHF’s Karan
Sheldon. Fast Rewinds organized by Bruce Austin at RIT
in 1989, 1991, and 1993.
1989
1985
The National Center
for Film and Video
Preservation established by the AFI and
NEA. Stephen Gong
and Gregory Lukow
provide guidance on
creating regional and
specialist archives.
1984
1982
1981
Human Studies
Film Archives,
Dept. of
Anthropology,
National Museum
of Natural History,
Smithsonian
Institution, established. Pam
Wintle collects
and preserves
amateur films as
documentation of
cultural and historical activities.
Dr. James Billington,
Librarian of Congress,
adds Zapruder Film
(1963) to the National
Film Registry. Other
amateur titles on the
Registry are added, in
1996 Topaz (1943-45),
home movie footage
taken at a Japanese
American internment
camp, and later these:
Cologne: From The
Diary Of Ray And
Esther (1939)
From Stump To Ship
(1930)
Multiple Sidosis (1970)
Tacoma Narrows
Bridge Collapse (1940)
AMIA Miami, Maryann
Gomes from the
Northwest Film Archive
attends her first AMIA
conference; helps
start the Regional
Audiovisual Archives
interest group (RAVA).
www.filmforever.org, a
Website for home film
preservation sponsored by AMIA, goes
live. By Jean-Louis
Bigourdan, Liz Coffey,
and Dwight Swanson,
edited by Bob Brodsky,
Toni Treadway (www.
littlefilm.org), David
Cleveland, Robin
Williams, East Anglian
Film Archive.
Film History: An
International Journal
special issue, Amateur
Cinema & Small-Gauge
Film, edited by Melinda
Stone and Dan Streible.
The Moving Image, the
AMIA journal, first issue.
Edited by Jan-Christopher
Horak; two issues per year.
Many articles and reviews
in the later editions relate to
amateur, small gauge and
regional film.