Amateur film festivals: sources, history, and perspectives

ABSTRACT This essay is aimed at establishing those theoretical and methodological coordinates necessary to an historical analysis of amateur film festivals. Research dedicated to this subject is sporadic. In core volumes on festival studies, the terms ‘amateur’, ‘home movies’, or ‘small gauge’ do not even appear. The reasons for this historiographical oversight must be discussed especially in relation to the type of films here presented. As Patricia Zimmermann, one of the greatest experts on ‘home movies’ states, ‘Amateur film is the garbage dump of film studies and film archives’. Amateur film festivals have suffered the same fate as the films they presented. The current analysis is dedicated to the birth and early developments of those film contests, which started being held in Europe in the mid-1920s. Finally, this study illustrates the types of historical sources available to researchers.