Full Description
This anthology offers the first systematic exploration of 9.5mm amateur film culture, practice and consumption, from its launch in 1922 to the present day. It breathes new life into our understanding of participatory media and its origins in the early twentieth century, revealing how a web of experiences gave rise to a vibrant ecosystem of collaborative storytelling and grassroots cultural movements that continue to shape our understanding of media participation.
The collection brings together the work of emerging specialists, early-career researchers, and respected scholars from anthropology, film, media studies and international film archival networks. The 16 chapters in this volume offer fresh insights into early participatory media culture and confirm the ongoing influence and impact of 9.5mm film on global media studies.
The interdisciplinary approach and wide-reaching perspectives make it a valuable resource for cinema and media curricula, film archival projects, cultural and media anthropology, visual sociology, as well as gender, memory and migration studies.
Contents
Introduction
Part I: Baby Cine: kinship through technology—three-eighths of an inch
1 9.5mm kinship and the creation of a new participatory media literacy
Annamaria Motrescu-Mayes
2 The Pathé Baby attitude: voluntariness, amateurism, craft, and electricity
Mats Björkin
3 Framing fragments: a young English woman and her 9.5mm Pathé Baby Ciné during the 1930s
Heather Norris Nicholson
4 Women and the 'Baby' ciné: gendered approaches to interwar amateur filmmaking in Britain
Paul Frith
5 The sensation of colour: Josef Mroz and his shortlived colour process Mroz Farbenfilm
Stefanie Zingl
Part II: The world of 9.5mm: pioneers, experimentation, and recovery
6 An Arctic trial: Pathé Baby in the extreme lands—the case of the 9.5mm amateur film of the Nobile expedition to the North Pole (1928)
Andrea Mariani and Luca Mazzei
7 The Pathé Baby projector: a tool of the Catholic Church
Elvira Shahmiri
8 Pathé Baby films of North Africa
Nicole Beth Wallenbrock
9 In search of 9.5mm widescreen
Guy Edmonds
10 A (small) history of Taiwanese cinema: Pathé Baby and its early years during the Japanese rule of Taiwan (1920s-1930s)
Wei-Chu Shih
11 They survive on nine-point-five: the lost films on the 9.5mm gauge and the need for their preservation
Christopher Bird
Part III: The social gauge: cine clubs and archival networks
12 A mixed economy: 9.5mm in ciné-club environments: Crystal Productions—Bournemouth Film Club 215
Zoë Viney Burgess
13 The social gauge: 9.5mm technologies and amateur cinema in Europe
Ryan Shand
14 Filmclub 9,5 Bern: exploring the collection and participation practices of a Swiss amateur ciné-club
Eliane Antonia Maurer
15 Extending the influence of cinema: 9.5mm in Catalonia (1924-1940)
Enrique Fibla‑Gutierrez, Mariona Bruzzo, Rosa Cardona, and Ignasi Renau
16 The Grahame L. Newnham Collection and the University of Southern California HMH Foundation Moving Image Archive
Dino Everett
Geographical list of archives with known 9.5mm holdings
List of prices for 9.5mm Equipment (UK)
