Description
When the small cameras and portable projectors that used 16mm film stock emerged in 1923, they allowed--for the first time in history--the possibility that anyone could make, show, and watch movies. A foundational but largely forgotten film format that offered a suite of technologies, 16mm was a democratic alternative to the larger and more expensive 35mm technology used by the commercial film industries around the world. With the remarkable ubiquity and utility of 16mm, moving images came to be integral to the way we play, learn, fight, work, and document the world, seeding the path to our current world of portable technologies and personal media.To mark 16mm's first 100 years, the essays in this book consolidate and catalyse considerations of the uniquely important--but still surprisingly underestimated and understudied--role that 16mm has played in film and media theory, history, and practice. It has long been known that artists and activists relied on 16mm cameras and projectors as tools of experimentation, organization, upheaval, and advocacy. Chapters here revisit these assumptions but also survey its many varied and additional uses: delivering public service messages, promoting corporate public relations, boosting church attendance, preaching good hygiene, instilling efficiency, popularizing political candidates, spreading propaganda, exploring sexuality, and encouraging community dialogue. In short, tis innovative film format facilitated new forms of hobby, play, work, learning and creativity. From the local to the transnational, small gauge filmmaking and showing also became integral to colonialist, imperialist, nationalist, and multi-nationalist institutions and efforts. In effect, for 100 years now, this uniquely important film format upended and shaped creative, political, governmental, juridical, sexual, educational, recreational, informational, televisual, industrial, promotional, and experimental practices and activities. It was integral to the expansion and evolution of the audio-visual languages that are a common-sense element of our mediated world. Its histories serve as a crucial and telling bridge from past media practices to our present wherein mobile, adaptable, and flexible moving image and sounds continue to thrive.
Table of Contents
Part I. Technology and Industry1. Forests, Fibers, and Film: The International Chemical Industry and the Rise of 16mm, Alice Lovejoy2. 16mm Standardization and Agfa's Strategic Policies in Fascist Italy, Andrea Mariani andSimona Schneider3. 16mm Leaves Home: The Ciné-Kodak Special and the Rise of Professional Small-Gauge Filmmaking, Louis Pelletier4. 16mm's Other Pioneer: Considering Bell & Howell, Martin L. Johnson5. A Little Steam Locomotive, Right in Your Hands: The Bolex H-16 Camera and the American Avant-Garde, John PowersPart II. The Audiovisual State6. The Raw Stock Exchange: 16mm Across the British Empire, Tom Rice7. Modern, Mobile, and Modular: 16mm Projectors and the Promise of Development in India, 1945-1965, Navdeep Sharma8. Making Progress at the Margins? Segregation and Southern Turpentine on 16mm, Loren Pilcher9. Cold War "Useable Knowledge" on 16mm: Julien Bryan, the International Film Foundation, and US Area Studies, 1945-1980, Lisa M. Rabin10. The Perverse Incentive: Small-Gauge Cinema Chain in the People's Republic of Poland, Konrad KlejsaPart III. Circulation and Networks11. Moving Amateur Movies: The International Amateur Cinema Network in the 1930s, Charles Tepperman,Keith M. Johnston,Andrea Mariani,Noriko Morisue, andSimona Schneider12. A "Lusty Infant" Comes of Age: The Allied Non-Theatrical Film Association and the Growth of the 16mm Sector, 1939-1949, Tanya Goldman13. Connection and Projection: The Lost Lives of 16mm Kinescope Networks, Kit Hughes14. A Survey of the History of Non-Theatrical 16mm Film Exhibition in Brazil until the 1960s, Rafael de Luna Freire,Filipe Gama, andTiago Quintes15. 16mm as North American Experimental Film's Medium Gauge, Michael ZrydPart IV. New Sites and Expanded Practices16. Beyond Home Movies: Japanese Americans, Amateur Filmmaking, and Camera Clubs in the 1930s, Denise Khor17. Moving Visions: 16mm Filmmaking as Transnational Missionary Apparatus in Twentieth-Century East Asia, Joseph W. Ho18. 16mm as a Professional Filmmaking Tool: The Case of Women Film-Lecturers, Liz Czach19. 16mm, Postwar Radiology, and the Production of Knowledge, Scott Curtis20. 16mm and Football: Teaching and Selling, Travis Vogan21. 16mm Smut, Eric Schaefer22. Instructions for Experimentation: Multi-Projection Films, Portable Projectors, and Avant-Garde Instruction Sheets, Josh Guilford23. Standards and Institutionalization: 16mm in Political Documentaries of the 1980s in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, Paola Margulis
