9.5mm Film and Participatory Media Before the Digital Age

Introduction

1 9.5mm kinship and the creation of a new participatory media literacy

2 The Pathé Baby attitude: voluntariness, amateurism, craft, and electricity

3 Framing fragments: a young English woman and her 9.5mm Pathé Baby Ciné during the 1930s

Heather Norris Nicholson

4 Women and the ‘Baby’ ciné: gendered approaches to interwar amateur filmmaking in Britain

5 The sensation of colour: Josef Mroz and his shortlived colour process Mroz Farbenfilm

6 An Arctic trial: Pathé Baby in the extreme lands—the case of the 9.5mm amateur film of the Nobile expedition to the North Pole (1928)

7 The Pathé Baby projector: a tool of the Catholic Church

8 Pathé Baby films of North Africa

9 In search of 9.5mm widescreen

10 A (small) history of Taiwanese cinema: Pathé Baby and its early years during the Japanese rule of Taiwan (1920s–1930s)

11 They survive on nine-point-five: the lost films on the 9.5mm gauge and the need for their preservation

12 A mixed economy: 9.5mm in ciné-club environments: Crystal Productions—Bournemouth Film Club 215

Zoë Viney Burgess

13 The social gauge: 9.5mm technologies and amateur cinema in Europe

14 Filmclub 9,5 Bern: exploring the collection and participation practices of a Swiss amateur ciné-club

15 Extending the influence of cinema: 9.5mm in Catalonia (1924–1940)

16 The Grahame L. Newnham Collection and the University of Southern California HMH Foundation Moving Image Archive

Biography

Annamaria Motrescu-Mayes is based at the University of Cambridge as a visual theorist, academic supervisor at the Department of Social Anthropology, Fellow of Clare Hall, and a member of the Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement. Her ongoing research and publications address questions of visual literacy and trauma, amateur media, and the anthropology of memory and migration.

Zoë Viney Burgess completed her PhD in film at the University of Southampton (2024). She works simultaneously as a film curator at Wessex Film and Sound Archive, Winchester (UK), and as a senior research fellow in Screen Archives at the University of West London’s Public Research Institute of Screen and Music (PRISM).

“A must-read for film scholars, archivists, and curators interested in 9.5mm film as a groundbreaking amateur gauge and its diverse histories of use. This volume offers a timely and comprehensive study of a technologically and historically significant participatory medium, shedding unique light on the roots of today’s digital media culture.” 

Dr Tim van der Heijden, Assistant Professor of Media Studies, Open University of the Netherlands 

"It is wonderful to see this great variety of contributions about the famous 9.5mm film format, collected in one volume. 9.5mm stimulated not just one specific small gauge culture but found various shapes and forms in different countries and eras. The editors greatly assembled the existing scholarship, also proving along the way that amateur media scholarship keeps on growing." 

Professor Susan Aasman, Professor of Digital Humanities, University of Groningen. 

“This anthology offers a groundbreaking exploration of the 9.5mm amateur film culture, tracing its evolution from 1922 to the present, and highlights the Pathé Baby's original significance in the growing interest in small gauges formats. Owing to its interdisciplinary insights, the volume emphasises the significance of participatory media before the digital age. An essential read for media scholars.” 

Dr Mirco Santi, President INEDITS European Association, and Co-Founder of Fondazione Home Movies-Archivio Nazionale del Film di Famiglia (Bologna, Italy)