Description:
The study of amateur filmmaking and media history is a rapidly-growing specialist field, and this ground-breaking book is the first to address the subject in the context of British women's amateur practice. Using an interdisciplinary framework that draws upon social and visual anthropology, imperial and postcolonial studies, and British and Commonwealth history, the book explores how women used the evolving technologies of the moving image to write visual narratives about their lives and times. Locating women's recreational visual practice within a century of profound societal, technological and ideological change, British Women Amateur Filmmakers discloses how women negotiated aspects of their changing lifestyles, attitudes and opportunities through first-person visual narratives about themselves and the world around them.
Brief description: Heather Norris Nicholson holds honorary research positions at the University of Huddersfield and also at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Review Quotes: The strength of the project is the valuable groundwork it lays for this new field of scholarship [women filmmakers study], so that we can continue to tackle questions about amateur filmmaking and women's agency... In researching and narrating these disregarded histories, the book shows how new forms of archival research can lead to the widening of the canon and a broader understanding of the practices and aesthetics of female filmmakers.--Charlotte Hallahan "LSE Review of Books"