> I'm writing about the use of 16mm in experimental filmmaking of the 1970s and > am looking for texts that deal with the history of film technology, scholarly > sources that look, for example, at the emergence of 16mm as an > amateur/documentary/artists' medium.
Hmm. If we distinguish 'amateurs' from 'artists' 16mm emerged as an amateur medium decades before the 70s, and was all but submerged for amateurs by the 70s, in favor of Super-8. You'd be hard pressed to find any artists who worked with the 'amateur' 16mm cameras that were made at least through the 1950s: Kodak K100, B+H 240, Reveres… and only spare use of 'amateur' Kodachrome and Ektachrome stocks that didn't come back from the lab with edge numbers. The history of documentary tech is a whole 'nother creature -- all 16mm up to the 70s -- but marked by advances in blipping, sound sync, battery power, coaxial magazines, reflex finders, etc. etc. (I have an AC-power only Yoder-style chop-top in my closet, if anyone wants one…). Only in the 70s did portable video emerge as a documentary medium, e.g. in the ½" open-reel 'Four More Years' by TVTV. Experimental filmmaking was not articulated to 'amateur' filmmaking as much as industrial/educational filmmaking. Experimental filmmaking was dependent on the wide availability of cameras, projectors, stocks, labs etc. primarily used by the 'A/V' market. Once that market moved to video, those sources began to dry up, posing ever-increasing difficulties to photo-chemical experimental work. A tech history of experimental film in the 70s should also look at it's intersections/oppositions to technologies used in 'video art', e.g. in Scott Bartlett's 'Off/On', and computer graphics, e.g. John Whitney. All that said, for the history of 'amateur' film, it would be remiss not to mention the work of FRAMEWORKER Patti Zimmerman, noted on the CHM site Buck linked. _______________________________________________ FrameWorks mailing list [email protected] https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks
