Making women amateur filmmakers visible: reclaiming women’s work through the film archive

Abstract

This article considers the place of women's amateur film within regional and national film archive holdings through a specific case study of the 'Women Amateur Filmmakers in Britain' project at the East Anglian Film Archive (EAFA). Reflecting on the process of cataloguing and presenting this collection, the article will explore the challenges of making women's creative filmed work visible, suggesting that women's amateur films exist at a crucial overlap of archival oversight and cultural stigma. We argue that prevailing associations of archive film with space, place and location could prevent feminist-led projects from gaining traction in the contested world of exhibition where locality often overshadows other thematic or stylistic approaches. We argue that only by reconsidering the types of films that are prioritised for preservation and presentation can women's films be made fully visible.

Amateurism

“…Only recently have several initiatives in film and video archives dug up historical traces of these neglected amateurs (cf. Hill and Johnston 2020;Motrescu-Mayes and Nicholson 2018).…”

Mother-blaming revisited: Gender, cinematography, and infant research in the heyday of psychoanalysis

“… 31. Gender gaps in practices of archival preservation and historiographical appreciation are an issue in nontheatrical film more generally ( Carter, 2022 ; Hill and Johnston, 2020 ). However, recent scholarship on medical and scientific film has rather focused on the cinematographic representation of women ( Boon, 2020 ; Cartwright, 1995 ; Reagan, Tomes, and Treichler, 2007 ).…”