Moving History - a guide to UK film and television archives in the public sector

Case Study - Ryan Shand

Ryan Shand is a Research Assistant on the project ‘Children and Amateur Media in Scotland’ at the University of Glasgow, U.K. He completed his Ph.D. in the Theatre, Film and Television Studies department of the University of Glasgow. His thesis was entitled ‘Amateur Cinema: History, Theory, and Genre (1930-80)’, which drew largely on primary material from the Scottish Screen Archive and related museum sources. The project established a critical dialogue between university-based Film Studies and the archive sector, via a series of case studies of influential groups, individuals, and movements. Prefaced by a chapter detailing the domination of amateur cinema studies by discussion of the ‘home mode’, he suggested that work to date has obscured an understanding of films made by cine-clubs within the highly organised film culture of the amateur cine movement. The main body of the thesis consisted of four chapters exploring the most popular generic practices of ‘institutionalised’ amateur filmmakers. Ryan argued that these production strands were formed by discourses circulating within amateur film journals, ‘how to do it’ manuals and amateur film festivals. Amateur cinema was viewed throughout as a parallel cine movement existing alongside professional practices, enjoying an ambivalent relationship to inherited professional standards. The final chapter proposed a fresh theorisation of ‘local’ amateur production within a national film culture, marked by distinctly cosmopolitan connections. This research was made possible by an award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Ryan’s current research focuses on children and amateur moviemaking in Scotland, which will be traced through archival film and video from the Scottish Screen Archive and private collections, print materials from various sources, and interviews with amateur cine and video participants.

Selected References:

‘Theorizing Amateur Cinema: Limitations and Possibilities’, The Moving Image: The Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists 8, 2 (2008), p. 36-60, University of Minnesota Press, ISSN 1532 3978
Also available at: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/the_moving_image/v008/8.2.shand.html

‘Amateur Cinema Re-Located: Localism in Fact and Fiction’, Ian Craven (ed.) Movies on Home Ground: Explorations in Amateur Cinema, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing (2009), p. 156-181, ISSN (10): 1-4438-1344-3

‘Visions of Community: The Post-War Housing Problem in Sponsored and Amateur Films’, Richard Koeck and Les Roberts (eds.) The City and the Moving Image: Urban Projections, Palgrave Macmillan (2010), p. 50-68, ISBN 978-0-230-24338-5

‘A Review of Mining the Home Movie: Excavations in Histories and Memories’, Screen 49, 4, (2008), p. 499-501, Oxford University Press, ISSN 0036 9543
Also available at: http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/49/4/499

‘A Review of Subjects and Sequences: A Margaret Tait Reader’, The Moving Image: The Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists 7, 1 (2007) p. 107- 110, University of Minnesota Press, ISSN 1532 3978
Also available at: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/the_moving_image/v007/7.1shand.html

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