From loss to reconsideration: rethinking silent film historiography through amateur cinema

Abstract

ABSTRACT If we understand cinema only as commercially produced and exhibited films then we are bound to a silent film history marked by loss and irreversibility. But what if we expand our conception of cinema to the numerous film experiences that happened beyond the commercial screen? This essay poses this question with the hope of initiating a transnational reinterpretation of silent film historiography through noncommercial cinema. I focus on two Catalan amateur filmmakers from the late 1920s and early 1930s, Lluís Gisbert and Llorenç Llobet Gràcia, , to show how silent film practices continued to develop beyond commercial cinema in the films, writings, and screening venues of amateurs throughout the world for decades after the release of the first talkies.