British Women Amateur Filmmakers

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 *
British Women Amateur Filmmakers makes an original and incisive contribution to the fields ofBritish film history, women’s film and media history, and twentieth-century British cultural history,and would be of particular interest to scholars and students working in these fields. It explores awealth of the ‘countless women’s stories about every day and other experiences […] captured onamateur footage that have remained largely neglected and forgotten in Britain’s public archivesand private collections’ (10). The authors’ meticulous analysis of these stories calls for filmarchives’ continuing work in recovering and widening access to them, and for the careful attentionof scholars of film and visual culture to such seemingly mundane or ephemeral films as expressionsof women’s changing lives and worlds. -- Hollie Price * The Journal of the British Records Association *
Packed with keenly researched historical detail and splendidly illustrated, 'British Women Amateur Filmmakers' brings to light the fascinating and hitherto hidden history of women's contribution to amateur film practice. -- Annette Kuhn, Emeritus Professor in Film Studies, Queen Mary University of London