Middlebrow Cultures Conference
Glasgow 14-15 July 2009
Researching The Middlebrow: Resources and
Archives
‘Neither Fanatical nor Lukewarm:
Amateur Cinema as Middlebrow
Culture’
Ian Craven
University of Glasgow
1. New ‘Sub-standard’
technologies
Pathé 9.5mm “Baby”
camera (introduced 1924)
Cine-Kodak Model B 16mm camera
(introduced 1923)
Pathescope ‘Ace’ projectors (displayed in the
museum of the Bath & District Cine Club)
(published 1933-1963)
2. Hobby Literature
(1928-1930)
(1932-1940)
(in assoc. with British Association of
Amateur Cinematographers)
(in assoc. with the Institute of
Amateur Cinematographers)
(1934-1967)
(1956-1964)
3. Defining Discourses
‘two fallacies about film-making irritate me quite a lot. I’m
going to call them the Highbrow Fallacy and the Lowbrow
Fallacy … I have little patience with this Highbrow fallacy, this
attitude which condemns a film as “not filmic” because there’s no
obvious virtuosity…
…The Lowbrow fallacy isn’t so dangerous but it’s just as stupid.
Its symptoms are the use of expressions like “the long-haired
boys”, “arty-crafty types” and “gloomy social prophets”… [from]
the 8mm man who runs off reels of Kodachrome in his garden…
…Good films are neither highbrow nor lowbrow, although bad
films frequently deserve the one condemnation or the other…’
Jack Smith: ‘The Highbrow and The Lowbrow Fallacy’, Amateur
Cine World, Vol. 22, No. 11 (March 1959), pp. 1122-1123.
‘their movies have stories running through them, because they
believe that shooting without any plan is a sheer waste of time and
money… Wallace admits frankly that not all have been successful
and remembers especially putting a lot of time and effort into the
production of a film about local history called The Charter with
indifferent results… [Wallace’s] greatest individual triumph was
North of The Great Glen, which won the novice prize in the
Scottish Amateur Film Festival of 1956…
In short, I would sum them up as a happy little family, in which
movies fit neatly and logically into place. Quite the average “Mr
and Mrs Movie-Maker” in fact. They are not fanatical about the
hobby, but they realise sensibly that what they get out of it depends
on the amount of effort and patience they are prepared to invest…’
David Alwyn: ‘Middle-of-the Road Man: Neither fanatical nor
lukewarm, Wallace Hall’s approach to movie-making is that of
the average family man’, Amateur Movie Maker, Vol. 2, No. 7
(July 1959), p. 351.
4. Archive Resources – Amateur Cinema
Scottish Screen Archive
National Library of Scotland
39-41 Montrose Avenue
Hillington Park
Glasgow G5 4LA
Curator: Janet McBain
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: http://ssa.nls.uk/
Coverage: The nation of Scotland (esp. Scottish Amateur Film Festival Collection)
East Anglian Film Archive
The Archive Centre
Martineau Lane
Norwich NR1 2DQ
University of East Anglia
Norwich NR4 7TJ Director: Richard Taylor
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.uea.ac.uk/eafa
Coverage: The East Anglian region, including Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex,
Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk (esp. IAC collections)
The Film Archive Forum
The Film Archive Forum represents all of the public sector film and
television archives which care for the UK's moving image heritage. It
represents the UK's public sector moving image archives in all archival
aspects of the moving image, and acts as the advisory body on national
moving image archive policy.
The Film Archive Forum (FAF) was established in 1987 with the object of
fostering an informal network of British moving image archives. Four archives
sent representatives to the first meeting, but the Forum now contains eleven
institutional members, representing all the national and regional film archives of
the UK. Full membership remains institutional, although others can be invited to
attend Forum meetings as Observing Members. Current FAF Observer members
are the British Library, the British Universities Film & Video Council (BUFVC),
the Irish Film Institute, the Northern Ireland Film and Television Commission,
the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), The National Archives and
the National Council on Archives.
See: www.bufvc.ac.uk/faf/aboutus.htm