Latest Journal Article: ‘Representations of the family in postwar British amateur film: family histories in the Lane and Scrutton collection at the East Anglian Film Archive’, in The History of the Family journal

Here is an overview of my latest journal article for those interested in:

• home movies


• representations of the family


• leisure


• postwar social history


• national identity

ABSTRACT

This article examines the construction of the postwar British family in amateur film with reference to
the Sidney Lane and Cecil Scrutton collection held at the East Anglian Film Archive (EAFA), particularly the films covering 1948 – 1961.

Heather Norris Nicholson argues that home movies contribute to ‘an understanding of leisure and visual- related practices of consumption as well as the social processes by which people came
to give themselves, and others, identities’ in the mid-twentieth century (Nicholson, H. N. [2004]. At Home and Abroad with Cine Enthusiasts: Regional Amateur Filmmaking and Visualizing the Mediterranean, ca. 1928 – 1962’. Geojournal,
49, 323–333).

By considering the social and historical contexts in which these home movies were produced, and using accompanying notes by one of the filmmaker’s sons, the leisure time films of
Lane and Scrutton can be analysed in order to understand how the amateur cine hobby ideologically constructed family, community and national identity in postwar Britain.

The images of Christmas parties, daytrips and holidays in these films reveal much about this particular family, and are therefore very illuminating to the social historian and film scholar of
today.

My journal article is based on some research I carried out at the East Anglian Film Archive a couple of years ago. Whilst there I viewed the birthday parties, day trips and holidays that the Lanes and Scruttons had filmed in Norfolk and other parts of Britain. I also got to know the family’s history in the 1950s, due to the collection’s reminiscences recorded in a document by one of the filmmakers’ sons.

Family collections such as this provide a fascinating insight into social history, and also how people
represented their leisure activities in amateur film: The cine hobby itself being a leisure pastime – popular with families who could afford it – in the postwar period.

Link to the article / abstract

Abstract: The Changing Face of the Amateur Holiday Film in Britain as Constructed by Postwar Amateur Cine World (1945-1951)

This is a copy of my abstract from an article I recently had published in the Historical Journal of Film Radio and Television.

The Changing Face of the Amateur Holiday Film in Britain as Constructed by Postwar Amateur Cine World (1945-1951)

Amateur film-making, motoring and holidaymaking were three complementary leisure activities that re-emerged with a greater intensity for middle-class consumers in Britain in the immediate post-war period. The end of restrictions on travel, an increasing availability of film stock and the first real chance to take advantage of the Holidays With Pay Act (the latter of which had been disrupted by the Second World War) created new opportunities for cine enthusiasts to produce a holiday film after 1945.

In this article, I consider how instructional articles on how to make a holiday film may have helped to construct ideologically a sense of British national identity for the middle-class readers of Amateur Cine World between 1945 and 1951. These articles can be mapped closely with the shifting patterns of holiday- making in the post-war period, and tend to encourage cine hobbyists to construct a sense of Britishness through their representations of the holiday; initially through images of the British countryside and coastline, and eventually by the framing of cultural difference in their first holidays abroad. 

A close analysis of this discourse can provide an insight into a construction of class, gender and national identity that is an alternative to the mainstream British feature film, for instance. 

The full article can be found online at:
Matt's Article at Taylor Francis Online