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Making women amateur filmmakers visible: reclaiming women’s work through the film archive

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Sarah Hill

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This is the authors' accepted manuscript of an article that has been published in its final definitive form by Routledge, 2020.

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Abstract

This article considers the place of women’s amateur film within regional and national film archive holdings through a specific case study of the ‘Women Amateur Filmmakers in Britain’ project at the East Anglian Film Archive (EAFA). Reflecting on the process of cataloguing and presenting this collection, the article will explore the challenges of making women’s creative filmed work visible, suggesting women’s amateur films exist at a crucial overlap of archival oversight and cultural stigma. We argue that prevailing associations of archive film with space, place and location could prevent feminist-led projects from gaining traction in the contested world of exhibition where locality often overshadows other thematic or stylistic approaches. We argue that only by reconsidering the types of films that are prioritised for preservation and presentation can women’s films be made fully visible.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Hill S, Johnston KM

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Women's History Review

Year: 2020

Volume: 29

Issue: 5

Pages: 875-889

Online publication date: 07/01/2020

Acceptance date: 08/05/2019

Date deposited: 10/05/2019

ISSN (print): 0961-2025

ISSN (electronic): 1747-583X

Publisher: Routledge

URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2019.1703541

DOI: 10.1080/09612025.2019.1703541

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