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nontheatricalscms.bsky.social
Nontheatrical Film and Media Scholarly Interest Group SCMS
@nontheatricalscms.bsky.social
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Official page of the Nontheatrical Film and Media Scholarly Interest Group of @SCMStudies. Sign up for our newsletter!
https://necs.org/news/calls-for-papers/new-newsletter-from-scms-nontheatrical-film-and-media-studies-sig
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Nontheatrical Film and Media Scholarly Interest Group SCMS @nontheatricalscms.bsky.social · Feb 18
The votes are in and our new mission statement is live! TY to Jennifer Blaylock, Sophia Gräfe, Tanya Goldman, + Florian Hoof for spearheading the rewrite + several members who provided incisive feedback. We hope this description makes us legible to nonspecialists!
www.cmstudies.org/page/groups_...
nontheatricalscms.bsky.social
There are many mid-20th century short documentaries about the arts including THE ART OF LOTTE REINIGER from 1970. Watch here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-TJ...

There’s also a great edited volume on the subject: ART IN THE CINEMA: THE MID-CENTURY ART DOCUMENTARY
www.bloomsbury.com/uk/art-in-th...
November 22, 2025 at 3:21 AM
nontheatricalscms.bsky.social
Mark your virtual calendars! @scmstudies.bsky.social just announced the virtual symposium schedule. Hope you can join us on Friday, 5 December from 11:00am to 12:00pm CST (17:00-18:00 UTC). New members, old members, and anyone and everyone between. Come on down!
November 18, 2025 at 8:32 PM
nontheatricalscms.bsky.social
Upping CFP for “The Amateur Reconsidered” special issue of Spectator. Submission deadline of December 1.
nontheatricalscms.bsky.social Nontheatrical Film and Media Scholarly Interest Group SCMS @nontheatricalscms.bsky.social · Oct 14
CFP — “The Amateur Reconsidered: Media, Labor, Publics”
Spectator Special Issue (Volume 46.2 Fall 2026)

Essay submissions due December 1, 2025.

See images with alt text here and in thread for CFP details. 1/
Spectator Special Issue: The Amateur Reconsidered: Media, Labor, Publics (Volume 46.2 Fall 2026) The category of the “amateur” has long been marked by instability. Etymologically linked to love (amator), the amateur historically signified passion and connoisseurship, yet in modern usage it has oscillated between devotion and dilettantism. This semantic tension has shaped how amateur practice has been positioned within aesthetic discourse, labor history, and the formation of the public sphere. Cinema and media studies has repeatedly returned to amateurism to both dismiss it and laud its critical and creative possibilities. Accounts of home movies and small-gauge film cultures once considered them part of the marginalia of personal or domestic life, but scholarship has since demonstrated their aesthetic, social, and historical significance. Scholarship, including Patricia Zimmermann’s foundational work, has situated amateur media within broader institutional and discursive frameworks, from the formation of aesthetic norms in clubs and contests to the intersections of labor history, expertise, and the public/private divide. Simultaneously, amateur practice has been examined as a counter-aesthetic and an alternative mode of production, as in Maya Deren’s “Amateur Versus Professional” (1959), which framed amateur film as resistant to the industrial logics of Hollywood. Yet amateurism has also been understood as politically mobilized: Soviet avant-garde circles and interwar Japanese movements such as Prokino envisioned the amateur as a figure of collectivism, workers’ culture, and social transformation. These diverse trajectories indicate that amateurism has never been a singular phenomenon, but rather a contested and heterogeneous category that both reflects and unsettles the boundaries of cultural production and consumption. At a moment when digital platforms both amplify non-professional production and intensify regimes of credentialization, amateurism demands renewed critical scrutiny. How might the consideration of amateur practice illuminate shifting conceptions of authorship, expertise, and creativity? In what ways does amateurism negotiate or contest the professionalization of cultural life? And how might the figure of the amateur reframe our understandings of mediation, publicness, and the politics of work and play? This special issue of Spectator seeks contributions that interrogate amateurism as a theoretical and historical category across media forms and cultural contexts. We welcome essays that draw from diverse archives and methodologies, including studies of amateur film and video, domestic and vernacular media, digital platforms, and transnational amateur practices. Possible topics include, but are not limited to: Histories and theories of amateur media Digital platforms and amateur media Amateur media in a transnational/global context The politics of amateurism The aesthetics of amateur media Leisure, hobbies, audienceship, and labor Home movies Fandom Preservation and archival practices regarding amateur media Pedagogical approaches to amateur media Book reviews of recent scholarship examining amateur media Deadline for Submission: December 1, 2025 Spectator is a biannual publication by the University of Southern California, School of Cinematic Arts, Division of Cinema & Media Studies. Manuscripts to be considered for publication should be sent to: Issue Editor: Wakae Nakane USC School of Cinematic Arts 900 W. 34th St. Suite 320 Los Angeles, CA-90089 wnakane@usc.edu
November 18, 2025 at 7:50 PM
Reposted by Nontheatrical Film and Media Scholarly Interest Group SCMS
allarvickfund.bsky.social
Launching today — Preserve Our Stories: ALCF’s 10-Yr Anniversary Campaign. We’re raising $2,500 to support micro-grants that preserve home movies & personal recordings — often the only moving images documenting community and family history. Please consider donating! givebutter.com/allarvickfund
November 18, 2025 at 7:46 PM
Reposted by Nontheatrical Film and Media Scholarly Interest Group SCMS
jennblaylock.bsky.social
Check out the new issue of Sources: Materials & Fieldwork in African Studies co-edited by Anita Afonu, Dan Hodgkinson, and I. Excited to see these essays and their accompanying sources finally make it out into the world. @kinolaus.bsky.social journals.openedition.org/sources/3100
10-11 | 2025 Revolutionary Cinemas
Au croisement de l’histoire, de l’anthropologie et des film studies, ce double numéro thématique analyse les généalogies et incarnations multiples des cinémas révolutionnaires africains, du Maghre...
journals.openedition.org
October 30, 2025 at 2:17 PM
nontheatricalscms.bsky.social
Now available online!

A CENTURY IN 16MM: THE REMAKING OF CINEMA (eds. Gregory A. Waller + Haidee Wasson) from @oxfordacademic.bsky.social. Featuring 23 essays on diverse uses and applications of the small gauge format worldwide!

Available in print in early 2026.

academic.oup.com/book/61621
November 13, 2025 at 5:21 PM
Reposted by Nontheatrical Film and Media Scholarly Interest Group SCMS
shannonmattern.bsky.social
Amelia Acker: "Each chapter introduces data archiving processes that relate to the evolution of data sovereignty...: from magnetic tape + timesharing computer models from the 1950s,... to file structures + virtual containers in cloud-based information services over the past 40 yrs" — open access!
Archiving Machines
Archiving Machines advances our understanding of memory, information, and data by charting the struggle between the computing technologies that archive data ...
mitpress.mit.edu
November 11, 2025 at 11:28 PM
Reposted by Nontheatrical Film and Media Scholarly Interest Group SCMS
irishfilminstitute.bsky.social
Today is @unesco.org's World Day for Audiovisual Heritage 🎞💞

To celebrate, we're sharing our most recent collection on the IFI Archive Player - Flora Kerrigan: Dream Maker.

Explore the full collection ➡️ https://ifiarchiveplayer.ie/flora-kerrigan/

#AudiovisualHeritageDay #UNESCOHeritage
October 27, 2025 at 12:01 PM
nontheatricalscms.bsky.social
We love a good #amateurcinema story!

"Could a box of 8mm amateur film reels change Irish film history?” via @irishfilminstitute.bsky.social

www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2...
Could a box of 8mm amateur film reels change Irish film history?
Despite Flora Kerrigan's youth at the time of her filmmaking, her work demonstrates someone ahead of her time and at the forefront of a transformative period in Irish society
www.rte.ie
November 10, 2025 at 8:14 PM
nontheatricalscms.bsky.social
CFP for upcoming special issue of @amianet.bsky.social's THE MOVING IMAGE journal! Topic: "Videotape in the Archive,” guest editors: @danerdman.bsky.social, Adam Charles Hart, Helena Shaskevich. Proposal deadline: March 31, 2026.

amianet.org/resources/mo...
The Association of Moving Image Archivists - The Moving Image: Special IssueThe Moving Image: Special Issue – The Association of Moving Image Archivists
amianet.org
November 10, 2025 at 8:10 PM
Reposted by Nontheatrical Film and Media Scholarly Interest Group SCMS
mediaburn.bsky.social
Studs’ Place: The Lost Sitcom That Put Working-Class Life on TV. Our latest blog post by scholar and guest author Jason J. Nebergall offers an analysis of how Studs Terkel's radical, working-class ethos was translated into the emerging television medium. Read more at: https://loom.ly/JDD26kA
November 6, 2025 at 4:04 PM
Reposted by Nontheatrical Film and Media Scholarly Interest Group SCMS
amianet.bsky.social
For nearly four decades, millions of students in the U.S., Canada, and elsewhere watched such 10- to 30-minute academic films to learn about wide-ranging topics like volcanoes, Charles Dickens, and U.S. anti-discrimination laws. https://loom.ly/MZuHOIs
Academic Film Archive of North America finds a home at Johns Hopkins
The eclectic collection of more than 7,600 vintage 16 mm classroom films represents an unsung genre that offered engaging new ways to teach the tales of humankind
hub.jhu.edu
October 28, 2025 at 1:21 PM
nontheatricalscms.bsky.social
Plans for future SCMS, AMIA, and/or Orphan Film Symposium?! An informal evening variety show where each attendee presents a short excerpt of their family home movies! 😂
tanyagoldman.bsky.social Tanya Goldman @tanyagoldman.bsky.social · Oct 16
PSA! Preserve your family’s #homemovies no matter the format (yes, this includes smart phone recordings).

Pictured here: screen grabs of digitized videotape of my dad, uncle, grandparents in Brooklyn (and maybe Catskills) circa 1955. Original format was 16mm (or 8mm?). Alas, reels were tossed.
October 16, 2025 at 9:43 PM
Reposted by Nontheatrical Film and Media Scholarly Interest Group SCMS
benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social
I'm taking the opportunity of this circulating to reshare my Media+Environment essay on the history of the beef industry's depictions of ots own effects on the land:

mediaenviron.org/article/1236...
Screenshots of cattle being herded and sprayed with insecticide from Herds West.
October 5, 2025 at 12:18 AM
nontheatricalscms.bsky.social
Upcoming free virtual event we’re very excited about on Friday, October 24!

@eastmanmuseum.bsky.social is hosting an in-depth introduction to their Film Atlas site. Will discuss development of project and future plans for this invaluable resource.

Register link
www.eastman.org/event/free-a...
In Focus: Film Atlas | George Eastman Museum
Join project leads James Layton and Crystal Kui, along with special guest authors, for the public launch of Film Atlas, a new interactive website developed by the George Eastman Museum and the Interna...
www.eastman.org
October 15, 2025 at 5:54 PM
nontheatricalscms.bsky.social
CFP — “The Amateur Reconsidered: Media, Labor, Publics”
Spectator Special Issue (Volume 46.2 Fall 2026)

Essay submissions due December 1, 2025.

See images with alt text here and in thread for CFP details. 1/
Spectator Special Issue: The Amateur Reconsidered: Media, Labor, Publics (Volume 46.2 Fall 2026) The category of the “amateur” has long been marked by instability. Etymologically linked to love (amator), the amateur historically signified passion and connoisseurship, yet in modern usage it has oscillated between devotion and dilettantism. This semantic tension has shaped how amateur practice has been positioned within aesthetic discourse, labor history, and the formation of the public sphere. Cinema and media studies has repeatedly returned to amateurism to both dismiss it and laud its critical and creative possibilities. Accounts of home movies and small-gauge film cultures once considered them part of the marginalia of personal or domestic life, but scholarship has since demonstrated their aesthetic, social, and historical significance. Scholarship, including Patricia Zimmermann’s foundational work, has situated amateur media within broader institutional and discursive frameworks, from the formation of aesthetic norms in clubs and contests to the intersections of labor history, expertise, and the public/private divide. Simultaneously, amateur practice has been examined as a counter-aesthetic and an alternative mode of production, as in Maya Deren’s “Amateur Versus Professional” (1959), which framed amateur film as resistant to the industrial logics of Hollywood. Yet amateurism has also been understood as politically mobilized: Soviet avant-garde circles and interwar Japanese movements such as Prokino envisioned the amateur as a figure of collectivism, workers’ culture, and social transformation. These diverse trajectories indicate that amateurism has never been a singular phenomenon, but rather a contested and heterogeneous category that both reflects and unsettles the boundaries of cultural production and consumption. At a moment when digital platforms both amplify non-professional production and intensify regimes of credentialization, amateurism demands renewed critical scrutiny. How might the consideration of amateur practice illuminate shifting conceptions of authorship, expertise, and creativity? In what ways does amateurism negotiate or contest the professionalization of cultural life? And how might the figure of the amateur reframe our understandings of mediation, publicness, and the politics of work and play? This special issue of Spectator seeks contributions that interrogate amateurism as a theoretical and historical category across media forms and cultural contexts. We welcome essays that draw from diverse archives and methodologies, including studies of amateur film and video, domestic and vernacular media, digital platforms, and transnational amateur practices. Possible topics include, but are not limited to: Histories and theories of amateur media Digital platforms and amateur media Amateur media in a transnational/global context The politics of amateurism The aesthetics of amateur media Leisure, hobbies, audienceship, and labor Home movies Fandom Preservation and archival practices regarding amateur media Pedagogical approaches to amateur media Book reviews of recent scholarship examining amateur media Deadline for Submission: December 1, 2025 Spectator is a biannual publication by the University of Southern California, School of Cinematic Arts, Division of Cinema & Media Studies. Manuscripts to be considered for publication should be sent to: Issue Editor: Wakae Nakane USC School of Cinematic Arts 900 W. 34th St. Suite 320 Los Angeles, CA-90089 wnakane@usc.edu
October 14, 2025 at 1:15 AM
nontheatricalscms.bsky.social
#homemovies
tanyagoldman.bsky.social Tanya Goldman @tanyagoldman.bsky.social · Sep 25
Oh how I adore scenes of characters watching home movies (or educational films) in movies. Here from George Cukor’s THE WOMEN (1939)
September 26, 2025 at 7:21 PM
nontheatricalscms.bsky.social
For the (marginal) WIN! 🙄
tanyagoldman.bsky.social Tanya Goldman @tanyagoldman.bsky.social · Sep 10
I’m pleased to learn new edition of LOOKING AT MOVIES toned down its dismissal of instructional films (Maybe the authors saw my Tweets?!)

7th edition: "not generally considered worthy of study or analysis"

8th edition: “though they aren’t often analyzed for cinematic language, [they] are studied…
From LOOKING AT MOVIES textbook (7th edition): “Instructional films seek to educate viewers about common interests rather than persuade them to accept particular ideas…they are not generally considered worthy of study or analysis" From LOOKING AT MOVIES textbook (8th edition) “Instructional films seek to educate viewers about common interests rather than persuade them to accept particular ideas…though they aren’t often analyzed for their use of cinematic language, instructional films are studied for their influence on unscripted television, children’s programming, public service videos, YouTube, social media, and other forms of media and communication."
September 10, 2025 at 2:10 PM
Reposted by Nontheatrical Film and Media Scholarly Interest Group SCMS
brownmediaarchives.bsky.social
See also "Threading the RCA Projector" on @avgeeks.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUXN...
and more on his channel: www.youtube.com/@avgeeks/sea...
Threading the RCA Projector (1960)
YouTube video by A/V Geeks 16mm Films
www.youtube.com
September 5, 2025 at 2:29 PM
nontheatricalscms.bsky.social
For your viewing pleasure!
tanyagoldman.bsky.social Tanya Goldman @tanyagoldman.bsky.social · Sep 4
Not quite sure how demo reels/educational films about how to use a #16mm projector were not on my radar until today but anyway...here’s one from Victor Animatograph circa 1940!
youtube.com/watch?v=BIvO6Z1sP8k
September 4, 2025 at 7:23 PM
nontheatricalscms.bsky.social
Some exciting books from @ucpress.bsky.social of interest to our community are dropping this fall!

The Development Film in the Americas by Molly Geidel +
Pipeline Cinema: The Cultural Infrastructure of Oil Extraction in Iran and Iraq by Mona Damluji

#FilmSky #AcademicSky
Cover of book: The Development Film in the Americas by Molly Geidel Cover for book: Pipeline Cinema: The Cultural Infrastructure of Oil Extraction in Iran and Iraq by Mona Damluji
August 19, 2025 at 6:33 PM
Reposted by Nontheatrical Film and Media Scholarly Interest Group SCMS
benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social
Okay, here's another nontheatrical series idea: Films as teach-ins. It could draw from the feminist and antiwar traditions of holding teach-ins and both screen films *of* teach-ins and *as parts of* teach-ins. Everyone watches and then stays to discuss.
benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · Feb 9
I just watched My Contribution (Sara Gómez, 1972) and it is a must-see for anyone who cares about feminism within revolutionary politics; the aftermath of the Cuban revolution as a historical moment; or documentary as a cinematic form. Just beautiful and edifying all around.
Screenshot from My Contribution (Sara Gómez, 1972) Screenshot from My Contribution (Sara Gómez, 1972) Screenshot from My Contribution (Sara Gómez, 1972)
February 9, 2025 at 5:36 AM
nontheatricalscms.bsky.social
We're eagerly awaiting the release of "A Century in 16mm: The Remaking of Cinema" edited by Greg Waller and Haidee Wasson. Coming soon from @oxfordunipress.bsky.social!
tanyagoldman.bsky.social Tanya Goldman @tanyagoldman.bsky.social · Aug 13
And there's finally a webpage! And what a line up! Happy that "A Century in 16mm: The Remaking of Cinema" edited volume will be dropping soon. My contribution covers trade organizations and the consolidation of the 16mm industrial sector during 1930s and '40s. ⬇️

global.oup.com/academic/pro...
August 13, 2025 at 3:59 PM
nontheatricalscms.bsky.social
Check out this list of 2025 National Film Preservation Fund grant recipients! Home movies, amateur films, travelogues, 'useful' media, and more. A treasure trove of #nontheatricalmedia! 🤩

@orphanfilm.bsky.social @amianet.bsky.social
August 8, 2025 at 3:36 AM
Reposted by Nontheatrical Film and Media Scholarly Interest Group SCMS
tanyagoldman.bsky.social
Love it when viewer’s guides and discussion guides are affixed inside film canisters! Evidence of “useful cinema” in action!
July 28, 2025 at 6:39 PM