This anthology offers the first systematic exploration of the 9.5mm amateur film culture, practice, and consumption, from its launch in 1922 to the present day. The sixteen chapters in this volume bring fresh insight into early participatory media culture and confirm the ongoing influence and impact of 9.5mm film on global media studies.
This anthology offers the first systematic exploration of the 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 sixteen chapters in this volume bring fresh insight 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.
Recenzijos
A must-read for film scholars, archivists, and curators interested in 9.5mm film as a groundbreaking amateur gauge and its diverse histories of use. This volume offers a timely and comprehensive study of a technologically and historically significant participatory medium, shedding unique light on the roots of todays digital media culture.
Dr Tim van der Heijden, Assistant Professor of Media Studies, Open University of the Netherlands
"It is wonderful to see this great variety of contributions about the famous 9.5mm film format, collected in one volume. 9.5mm stimulated not just one specific small gauge culture but found various shapes and forms in different countries and eras. The editors greatly assembled the existing scholarship, also proving along the way that amateur media scholarship keeps on growing."
Professor Susan Aasman, Professor of Digital Humanities, University of Groningen.
This anthology offers a groundbreaking exploration of the 9.5mm amateur film culture, tracing its evolution from 1922 to the present, and highlights the Pathé Baby's original significance in the growing interest in small gauges formats. Owing to its interdisciplinary insights, the volume emphasises the significance of participatory media before the digital age. An essential read for media scholars.
Dr Mirco Santi, President INEDITS European Association, and Co-Founder of Fondazione Home Movies-Archivio Nazionale del Film di Famiglia (Bologna, Italy)
Introduction
Part I: Baby Cine: kinship through technologythree-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 landsthe 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 (1920s1930s)
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
ProductionsBournemouth Film Club 215
Zoė 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 (19241940)
Enrique FiblaGutierrez, 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)
Annamaria Motrescu-Mayes is a visual theorist at the University of Cambridge as a visual theorist, academic supervisor at the Department of Social Anthropology, and a member of the Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement. Her ongoing research and publications address questions of visual literacy and trauma, amateur media and the anthropology of memory and migration.
Zoė Viney Burgess completed her PhD in film at the University of Southampton (2024). She works simultaneously as a film curator at Wessex Film and Sound Archive, Winchester (UK), and as a senior research fellow in Screen Archives at the University of West Londons Practice Research Institute of Screen and Music (PRISM).
