Filmhistory 30 1 04 PDF

“A Recognized Screen”: The New York Annual Movie Parties from Parlor to Public
Author(s): Charles Tepperman

Source: Film History, Vol. 30, No. 1, TOWARD A GLOBAL HISTORY OF AMATEUR FILM
PRACTICES AND INSTITUTIONS (Spring 2018), pp. 58-85
Published by: Indiana University Press
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CHARLES TEPPERMAN
“A Recognized Screen”: The New York Annual

Movie Parties from Parlor to Public
ABSTRACT: Scholars and archivists of amateur cinema in recent years have started to
appreciate the significant creative accomplishments of this kind of filmmaking. However,
amateur films often remain somewhat opaque because we know relatively little about
the contexts of their exhibition and reception. To address this challenge, this essay closely
examines a specific series of amateur-film screenings held annually in New York during
the 1930s. The shifting exhibition circumstances and institutional collaborations of these
events illuminate some of the general parameters and challenges of amateur-film exhibi-
tion during the period.
KEYWORDS: movie nights, amateur-film exhibition, Duncan MacD. Little, recognized

screen, amateur-film clubs
INTRODUCTION
During the 1930s, an annual amateur-movie night grew from a private parlor
screening to a widely heralded public event that exhibited films from around the
world and drew hundreds of viewers. New York insurance broker and amateur
filmmaker Duncan MacD. Little and his wife Dorothy organized the first “Movie
Party” for a small group of friends in 1929; they repeated the event annually for
over a decade, eventually forging cooperative relationships with institutions
like Columbia University in order to enhance the screening further. By 1939, the
Tenth Annual Movie Party reported an audience of five hundred viewers, and in
1940 it was billed as a kind of Oscars for amateur films.
In recent years, researchers have shown that beyond rough home mov-
ies, amateurs often produced polished films that reflected their interest in
travel, work, or artistic experimentation via motion pictures.1 The widespread
organization of amateur moviemakers in the United States began in the late
1920s, following soon after the introduction of the 16mm film format in 1923.
Film History, 30.1, pp. 58–85. Copyright © 2018 Trustees of Indiana University. doi: 10.2979/filmhistory.30.1.04
59
The Amateur Cinema League was formed in 1926, and prominent magazines
such as Photoplay and American Cinematographer were soon sponsoring
amateur-movie contests. By the early 1930s, amateur-movie contests increas-
ingly boasted of the high aesthetic quality and international scope of the films
among their award winners. But the exhibition of these films was generally
limited to amateur-movie clubs. How, then, to convince the broader public of
the artistic and cultural significance of amateur movies when they were not
generally available? Little wrote in 1940 that a central goal of the Annual Movie
Parties was to establish a “recognized screen” upon which amateur films could
be viewed and appreciated.2
But recognized as what? This essay examines the Annual Movie Parties
within the context of a 1930s film culture that included the tradition of travel
filmmaking, the rise of film appreciation and educational film, and emerging
alternative film venues among both amateurs and beyond. A period of signif-
icant transformation was taking place in the realm of nontheatrical motion
pictures during the early 1930s. Haidee Wasson has written about this with
respect to the domestication of 16mm film in the 1920s and 1930s, but in this
essay I will examine an inverse movement: how and why 16mm amateur-film
exhibition moved from private to public venues.3 In the 1930s we see the full
public encounter with new small-gauge film technologies and also a grappling
with them to understand their uses and protocols. As Lisa Gitelman points out,
media are most emphatically visible when their protocols of use, their functions,
and their public dimensions are still being worked out. She writes, “Media
become authoritative as the social processes of their definition and dissemi-
nation are separated out or forgotten, and as the social processes of protocol
formation and acceptance get ignored.”4 The fact that the Littles declared a
recognized screen as their objective emphasizes this issue of visibility during the
time when the cinema amateur was itself still being defined. The Littles were
concerned with making amateur cinema visible, but the terms of that visibility
and recognition—its publicness, its content, its aesthetic dimensions—were
still being negotiated. Moreover, the Littles’ location in New York City framed
this visibility in terms of a metropolitan sense of cinema culture. For Gitelman,
media protocols include “a vast clutter of normative rules and default condi-
tions, which gather and adhere like a nebulous array around a technological
nucleus. Protocols express a huge variety of social, economic, and material
relationships.”5
In what follows, I trace the changing protocols of amateur film exhibition
via the Littles’ Annual Movie Parties, exploring the particular ways in which
small-gauge film exhibition underwent changes in context, content, and mean-
ing. I propose that the Annual Movie Parties provide a productive case study
CHARLES TEPPERMAN | A Reco gnized Screen
60
for examining the emergence and efforts to institutionalize certain aspects of

amateur film in the 1930s. The Littles were hardly alone in viewing amateur
cinema as an artistic medium that provided an alternative to the industrial form
of culture produced by Hollywood. Amateur-movie clubs proliferated during
this period, and their activities were chronicled in national publications like
Movie Makers and American Cinematographer. These publications also spon-
sored movie contests and established centralized film libraries, thus connecting
film amateurs to increasingly complex local, national, and international net-
works.6 What marks the Littles’ Annual Movie Parties as particularly notewor-
thy was their (eventual) effort to bring amateur movies to the broader public
and the specific parameters and challenges of amateur film exhibition during
the period. Over the course of the decade, the Annual Movie Parties established
associations between amateur cinema with cultural, educational, and interna-
tional institutions in hopes of cementing its public role and legitimacy as an
art form. Articles about the Annual Movie Parties, authored either by Duncan
MacD. Little or others, appeared in the same major amateur film publications
that were promoting the expansion of amateur film culture (especially American
Cinematographer), where they provided a model of new amateur exhibition.7
While these articles often characterized the development of the parties as an
“evolution,” this characterization effaces the actions and decisions that go into
such development.8 A closer look at changes in exhibition protocols reveals
some key choices and decisions about how amateur films could be shown and
understood. As Little wrote in 1935, “Several years ago we gave our first formal
Movie Party, all unaware that it was to become an annual event that our friends
would not let us omit or forget. Nor do we wish to forget, for the Parties have
developed in a most interesting manner.”9
The origins of the Annual Movie Parties can be best understood in rela-
tion to the tradition of travelogue filmmaking and travel lectures. Tom Gunning
notes that the early twentieth century saw the development of a nearly obses-
sive documenting of one’s trips with postcards and with snapshots or films. “In
the modern era the very concept of travel becomes intricately bound up with
the production of images,” he writes.10 Although most scholarly attention has
focused on travel filmmaking from the early and silent era, Jeffrey Ruoff points
out that travel films were still a major part of moviegoing in the 1930s.11 A tradi-
tion of amateur travel filmmaking and lecturing started to emerge in the 1920s
and 1930s as well.12 It was within this context of travel films and the amateur’s
affinity to them in the 1920s and 1930s that the Annual Movie Parties first
took place. Over the course of a decade, however, the logic of the Movie Parties
shifted significantly with the addition of different kinds of films and important
changes to ways that films were selected and presented. This essay is organized
Film History | Volume 30.1
61
in numbered parts, each of which highlights the establishment of or change to

a significant aspect of the film exhibition at the Annual Movie Parties.
1. INVITE FRIENDS, PRESENT OWN TRAVEL FILMS
The first “Travel Movie Party” was a private presentation of films, held in June
1929 in the Littles’ living room for twelve guests. “The idea was born quite
casually,” the Littles recall, “some friends were going abroad that summer, and
we gave for them a bon voyage party, using as the basis of entertainment films
we had made while abroad the previous year.”13 In fact, the Littles supplied the
program of films, but they didn’t produce them all; their own travel films were
supplemented by films from the Cunard Line. Home film exhibition at this time
could include both amateur-made films and films circulated via a growing net-
work of commercial film libraries that distributed film for both entertainment
and advertising purposes. The Littles presented their own films, A Storm at Sea,
On Board the S. S. Homeric, Paris, and Chateau of Old Touraine, which chronicled
their trip from New York to Europe.14 They supplemented these films of their
own European trip with two films borrowed from the Cunard Line: Paris to
London via Air-Union and A Cruise on the Mauretania. These two films appear
to track the same route (from New York to London to Paris) that the Littles had
travelled, in effect supplementing their own homemade footage with the pro-
motional footage produced by Cunard, and perhaps creating a more complete
(if synthetic) account of the Littles’ trip to Europe. As these films indicate, many
of the earliest amateur moviemakers were prosperous enough to afford both
expensive holidays and the filmmaking equipment needed to document them.15
This shifted somewhat over the course of the 1930s as new technologies (like
8mm film) meant moviemaking became more affordable.
For the Little parties, as for travel cinema more generally, there is a close
link between image-making and the emergence of modern travel and tour-
ism. The conjoined presentation of amateur films with Cunard Line promo-
tion films is consistent with the logic of travel filmmaking in the first decades
of the twentieth century. Jennifer Peterson notes that early travel films often
focused as much on the logistics of modern travel as they did on the spectacle
captured in the travel films. With respect to films about the American west,
Peterson notes, “Their ultimate quest is still magnificent scenery, but the films
are equally invested in representing the process of getting to that scenery—the
railroads, cars, horse paths, and walking trails the traveler must use to reach
the scenery—and the experience of viewing the scenery once one has reached it”
(emphasis in original).16 As the first Movie Party makes clear, travel films had
as much value as anticipations of travel as they did as recollections of places
visited. Travel companies like White Star and Cunard were also familiar with
62
the close relationship between film and travel; by the late 1920s some had even
equipped their ships with film-processing facilities.17
2. AD HOC SCREENING: GUESTS SUPPLY FILMS, ALL SHOWN
WITH FILMMAKERS PRESENT
After the first Movie Party in 1929 and up to 1934, the films presented were
those that the party attendees brought with them, and there was no advance
curating of the program. In one telling, Duncan MacD. Little says that early
attendees were invited to “bring a film by way of a ticket”—an interesting formu-
lation of the exchange that characterized the early years of the party.18 Because
the second program (16 guests), held in December 1930, was determined by
what the attendees brought with them to show, it was somewhat less cohe-
sive than the first year’s focus on a ship voyage to Europe. Some of the films—
Mediterranean Cruise (Horace Wilcox) and Europe in a Motor-Car (Tommie
Delmhorst)—continued this theme, but the program also included films from
a variety of other locations and subjects. Indeed, at the top of the program was
a film about a travel-related skill, not a specific journey: Tying a Salmon Fly
(Niels-Eske Brock, 1930). The film proved so popular at the Annual Movie Party
that it was shown again, “by request,” the following year. This film was also the
first that we can connect with a broader amateur film community, as Brock’s
film would be awarded an honorable mention in the 1931 ACL Ten Best listing.19
The rest of the program was mostly restricted to travel films about mountain
climbing, travel through California and the Canadian Rockies, and Little’s own
Nova Scotia Scenes (Duncan MacD. Little). A definite outlier in this group was An
Impersonal ‘Child’s Growth’ (Berton J. Delmhorst), whose title alludes to progres-
sive attitudes toward child care and education that were current in the 1930s.
Several of the attendees included in the program became regular contributors
to the Annual Movie Party over the next few years.
The manner of film presentation at the early Annual Movie Parties may
have had close affinities with the presentational tradition of early film exhibi-
tion, wherein a filmmaker or other presenter created a live presentation through
music and aural accompaniment for films that otherwise might not function as
self-contained texts. Rick Altman argues that we need to think about early cin-
ema as a performer-oriented history, rather than a “film-oriented” approach to
cinema.20 The same thing seemed to be true of early amateur-film history, where
a film’s exhibition was often linked directly to the presence of the filmmaker. In
North American commercial cinema, we see the shift from lecture film to more
industrially self-contained film starting around 1912 when the lecture comes to
be inscribed in films via intertitles, and they are distributed without a lecturer.
However, Altman notes, “during the first decade of the century, homemade
63
films about foreign places and events had provided itinerant lecturers with
personalized props for their programs.”21 Amateur travel films during the late
1920s and early 1930s continued this tradition: they were not industrial prod-
ucts, and they were often connected to a live filmmaker’s presentation of his or
her experience. The Littles’ Movie Parties during this period almost exclusively
included films brought and presented by the filmmaker him- or herself.22 Of
course, the Littles’ first parties were also private, rather than public, film pre-
sentations, taking place in the Littles’ home, and in this respect, they also drew
on traditions of parlor entertainment, such as domestic music, games, and dra-
matic performances.23 However, both the presence of the filmmakers and the
privateness of the parties would gradually give way to the goal of broadening the
audience and purview of amateur-film exhibition to a larger public.
Thirty guests attended the 1932 Annual Movie Party and thirty-nine in
1933, and the program was again selected from films brought in by the guests,
making it ad hoc, more than curated: “each guest has been asked to bring a
reel of his or her own film, and every reel brought has always been screened.”24
Many films shown framed a journey to distant or unusual places, such as Glacier
Park from a Railway Train (Edward K. Warren), To the South Sea Islands (Robert
W. Shearman), Italy (Helen Peabody), and At a Dude Ranch (Evelyn Sherman).
Similarly, Through Our National Parks (Robert Shearman) and Gaspesie (Berton
J. Delmhorst) identified popular tourist destinations in the 1930s. Even as the
early 1930s saw a reduction in exotic travel because of the Great Depression,
there was still a popular fascination with nonfiction subjects relating to North
American locations, or what Dana Benelli describes as the “domestic exotic.”25
Along these lines was Gloucester and the Fisherman’s Race, which was likely an
account of one of the annual schooner races that took place during the 1920s
and 1930s. Paul Thebaud, who brought the film, was the nephew of Louis A.
Thebaud, whose schooner, the Gertrude L. Thebaud raced against the Bluenose
schooner several times, winning in 1930. It is possible that the film presented
at the Movie Party was an amateur newsreel of one of these races. In a similar
vein, For the Fun of It (Edward K. Warren), shown in 1934, was described as the
“only film record made of take-off by Amelia Earhart on her famous solo flight
to Europe.”26 In keeping with this theme of transportation and launches, Little
presented his own film, Midnight Sailing of the S.S. Manhattan (Duncan MacD.
Little, 1931), a record of “the first sailing of United States Liner . . . filmed from
the pierhead in New York, in a downpour of rain at midnight.”27 Also drawing
on local materials were Little’s Leaves from an Old Scrap-Book (Duncan MacD.
Little) and Follies and Scandals of 67th Street (Duncan MacD. Little), which sound
like first-hand accounts of the filmmaker’s own surroundings and experiences
closer to home.
64
3. ADDING SOUND, IMPROVING PROJECTION

Duncan MacD. Little later reported that he began experimenting with sound
accompaniment in the summer of 1933, so we must presume that prior to that
point, the films presented at movie parties were silent, accompanied primarily
by a speaker (typically the filmmaker). Starting at the 1934 party, films were
accompanied by music using a double turntable system and a microphone. At
the same time, projection was perfected and made continuous by using two
projectors, so there was no break for threading between films. Lighting for the
screening room was also controlled from the “projection room.”28 The travel
theme was again prominent in 1934, and the “over a mile of film” shown that year
included amateur film voyages to the White Mountains, Ireland, Russia, Maine,
Guatemala, Bermuda and Colorful Bits of Europe (John V. Hansen). Little’s own
contribution to the 1934 program was one of the few that didn’t stage a journey:
The Circus Is in Town (Duncan MacD. Little).29 For the rest of the film on this
one-mile voyage around the world, audience members were also Cruising with
the “Nirvana” (Berton J. Delmhorst), hunting for elephants, and positioned Under
the Maple Leaf (Hamilton Jones, 1933). This last title was an award-winning
film used to accompany the filmmaker’s lectures promoting rail travel to the
Canadian west.30
Under the Maple Leaf was much acclaimed in amateur circles for its skill-
ful sound accompaniment, which is perhaps what prompted Little to add this
dimension to his movie parties. Jones outlined some of his sound strategies in a
1934 Movie Makers article that describes his development of a sound accompa-
niment apparatus to provide a “finishing touch” for the otherwise silent amateur
films he made. Jones started by accompanying films with music using a single
portable phonograph, but this technique soon advanced to using two turnta-
bles in order to cover the changeover (moment of silence) between records.31
Jones developed a suitcase version of the dual turntable and amplifier system,
and Movie Makers provided information for amateur filmmakers who wished
to build a similar device (fig. 1). Accounts of the amateur use of dual turntables
proliferated during the 1930s and 1940s. In addition to 78 rpm records of music,
Jones also used records of sound effects to accompany his films. With some
practice, he suggests, achieving apparent synchronization between sound and
film was easily accomplished, creating something like an amateur version of
the Mickey Mousing technique. But even if practicing the technique of sound
accompaniment made it more seamless, Jones’s goal wasn’t to settle on a final
version of the soundtrack but to retain a dynamic and performative element of
the film’s exhibition.32 For Jones, amateur and nontheatrical film could encom-
pass a perpetually changing film-work, as the footage could be changed and the
65
Fig. 1: Hamilton Jones using his suitcase version of the dual turntable system (Movie Makers,
July 1934, 298). (Courtesy Media History Digital Library)
sound accompaniment scored with new variations at each presentation. Jones

had been using this system since approximately 1931, so it is likely that Little
had encountered or read about it and started experimenting with a similar dual
turntable accompaniment system in 1933.
4. CURATED PROGRAM, FILMS SELECTED BY JURY
During the early years of the party, Little reported that it sometimes took con-
siderable cajolery and persuasion to encourage moviemakers to submit films
for the program.33 But by the Fifth Annual Movie Party, in April 1934, this was
evidently no longer a problem when the “audience had to, and did, sit through
the passing of considerably over a mile of film, which is too much.”34 In 1935
Little determined that the program of films would be selected in advance of
the Movie Party, thus shifting the exhibition format from impromptu enter-
tainment to curated screening. The greater selectivity of the 1935 program did
not result in a reduction in guests, even though most became purely spectators
rather than contributors to the program. Nearly all of the eight films shown
that year were from filmmakers who had previously contributed films to the
66
Movie Party programs. The selected program was again oriented toward travel
and topical subjects: a cruise film, visual accounts of trips to places both near
(New Jersey; Washington, DC; Florida) and far (Quebec, England, Yugoslavia).
Some of the films also highlighted new developments in amateur film, such as
two reels by John V. Hansen: Washington in Spring Dress and Studies in Koda-
color.35 The filmmakers were not only men. For example, Gwladys Sills became
a regular contributor to the movie parties, presenting films at each of the 1934,
1935 and 1936 parties. A former actress of London and New York stage, and the
ex-wife of Hollywood star Milton Sills, Gwladys became a globetrotter of sorts
and a prominent amateur moviemaker.36 She wrote an article for Movie Makers
about the production of her 1934 film about Russia in which she recounts her
experience of being arrested for filming in the USSR.37
Though Duncan MacD. Little curated the 1935 program himself, in 1936 a
juried selection process was instituted and would remain the normal procedure
for the rest of the Annual Movie Parties. Each year, Little invited amateurs to
submit films for the upcoming Movie Party and provided a deadline long before
the event itself. The selection criteria seemed to shift over time, from an empha-
sis on travel films, to aesthetic criteria (experiments, for example), and eventu-
ally to films that emphasized the educational context for amateur filmmaking.
While the quality was said to have improved considerably over the years, in the
mid-1930s, Little was clear to point out that it was never a goal of the party to
hand out prizes for best film: “it is all meant as grand fun, and with no awards
there should be no heartburns . . . the judgment for the past two programs (1936
and 1937) has not been for numerical order of quality but for interest to the audi-
ence and that the program have ‘balance.’”38 In this way, Little distinguished his
annual screening from the amateur-movie contests held by Movie Makers and
American Cinematographer (among many others) that awarded the best films
of each year; the espoused goals of the Annual Movie Parties were more related
to exhibition and audience engagement. The program committee for the 1936
movie party was “composed of Eileen Creelman, film critic of the New York Sun;
Frank S. Nugent, film critic of The New York Times, and W. T. Benda, artist and
creator of the Benda masks.”39 This group represented both mainstream film
journalism and the artistic world.40 The composition of the jury that selected
the films shown in 1936 signaled a shift toward a more public aspiration for
the movie parties and amateur cinema more generally. The alignment of the
Annual Movie Parties with the emergence of an institutionalized film culture in
New York during the 1930s can be seen in the shifting composition of the jury.41
Correspondingly, the 1938 program approved by a committee of nine (!) people
that included a mix of professional film critics, artists, amateur film writers,
67
and members of the academic film world (including both Columbia University
and the Museum of Modern Art).42
5. SOME FILMMAKERS NOT PRESENT, SOME FILMS SUPPLIED
BY ORGANIZATIONS
By the middle of the 1930s, the Annual Movie Parties were thoroughly trans-
formed from their original state. What had begun as a home screening of travel
films was increasingly a more formal and curated screening of noteworthy
amateur films. By the sixth movie party in 1935, seating for the movie parties
was carefully organized and tickets and programs were prepared. Though
still held in the Littles’ home, the growth of the audience for the Movie Parties
resulted in a more formalized presentation, creating a hybrid of a private and
formal film exhibition. Through the first seven Movie Parties, the filmmakers
were generally present when their films were shown.43 But during the 1930s, the
parties saw a broadening of participants attending, and representation from
the Amateur Cinema League and other organized amateur groups expanded
steadily.
Starting in 1936, the movie-party program began more systematically
including award-winning or otherwise acclaimed amateur films, shown with-
out the filmmakers present (fig. 2). Although some filmmakers would continue
to be present to screen their films, in the latter half of the decade the Movie
Parties shifted to include more films without the filmmaker in attendance.
This included films that were either borrowed from an amateur organization
or which were submitted for selection from somewhere far away and would
be screened without the filmmaker present. Corresponding to this shift was
Little’s acknowledgment of cooperating international amateur-movie orga-
nizations in the movie-party programs. While the juried selection and use of
organizations to provide films meant that there was no longer a strict relation-
ship between films shown and audience members in attendance, there was still
an effort to maintain this link in some form, with present or past filmmakers
traveling some distance to attend. In 1937, several guests came from as far away
as Trois-Rivieres, Quebec, Washington, DC, and Boston, but more typically
audience members were drawn from the immediate New York area.44 Naturally,
as the sources of films became more internationalized, and as the Movie Party
became more global in its scope, there was less likelihood that all filmmakers
could accompany their films and present them in person. The absence of each
film’s maker tilted the Movie Parties away from their domestic origins and
toward new alignments with national and international amateur film networks
and institutions.
68
Fig. 2: The 1936 program included award-winning films provided by the American Society of
Cinematographers. (Amateur Cinema subject files, Margaret Herrick Library)
6. NEW CATEGORIES AND AWARD-WINNING FILMS

It was not until the 1936 party that any approach to filmmaking besides travel
films was emphasized. The 1936 show was presented in three parts (divided by
two intermissions): first “Four Films of Travel” were shown; then came “Four
Films in Color,” which included works called Experiments and a film by Little
69
himself called More Experiments (Duncan MacD. Little). The program concluded
with two award-winning films from the American Society of Cinematogra-
phers’ 1935 amateur contest: Happy Day (T. Lawrenson, Scotland, 1935) and In
the Beginning (Fred C. Ells, USA/Japan, 1935).45 Since both of these are extant
films, we can determine that they are quite different from the films conven-
tionally shown at the Movie Parties.46 Most notably, neither of these acclaimed
films is a travel film: Happy Day chronicles a day in the life of a Scottish family,
focusing on the experiences of two-year-old child, from waking, to the beach,
to bedtime. In the Beginning is a visual account of the biblical story of creation,
presented through a montage of close-up shots of the natural world. Both films
offer a poetic treatment of the subject matter, achieved through extensive use
of close-up shots. In the former film, this is effective because it focuses our
attention on the child’s experiences of surprise and delight at so many things.
In the latter film, rhythmic and associational montage animates the close-up
shots, creating a sequence of graphic connections between elements in the nat-
ural world, which we can then interpret in metaphorical (and indeed religious)
ways.47 These films demonstrate an aesthetic tendency of advanced amateur
filmmaking in the 1930s that follows in the tradition of late silent-era stylistics,
emphasizing dramatic close shots and expressive editing. That these films were
winners of several major prizes and were included in the Annual Movie Parties
attests to their exemplary nature as a sort of emergent standard of amateur film
artistry. That the Littles chose to include them in their program—despite the
break with tradition in terms of both form of presentation (filmmakers not pres-
ent) and thematic material (they were not travel oriented)—reinforces the sense
that the Movie Party had developed a mission of promoting and advocating
for the accomplishments of amateur cinema. The 1937 party announced even
greater selectivity in the films than ever before as well as a high quality of films
exhibited. The films represented a selection of award-winning and previously
unseen works. None of the films shown at the 1937 screening are known to be
extant, but they again include several prize-winning works.
7. FROM HOME TO THEATER
The 1937 Movie Party was the first to be held outside the Littles’ home at the Salle
des Artistes, a small theater in a private building on West Sixty-Seventh Street
down the block from their home. The party grew from sixty guests in their home
in 1936 to over three hundred guests in the Salle des Artistes in 1937, demon-
strating the swelling popularity of the event. The screening venue marked a
considerable advance over the previous domestic arrangement: “[T]he distance
from projector to screen was 65 feet—and, after masking, the screen was 12 feet
wide! . . . We turned the room around and used the little stage as a ‘projection
70
room,’ with a screen of beaver board and scantling to hide the activities, with
two projection ports provided, and a viewing slit so that Miss Boerner might
watch the screen and know where her record changes came.”48 The twelve-foot
screen must have been much larger than the size of screen possible in their
domestic space. But the exhibition arrangements remained hybrid and make-
shift: this was not a commercial cinema, but a theater with stage adapted for
amateur-film exhibition.
The Littles were not alone in presenting amateur films outside of home
or club contexts during the 1930s. A 1936 Movie Makers article reports on a
similar event taking place in Boston, organized around the travel films made
by Harriet O’Brien, a member of the Amateur Cinema League. Entitled “An Eve-
ning of Travel in Celluloid Land,” the screening was held in a hotel ballroom and
featured piano accompaniment.49 The report indicates an attendance of more
than 250 “friends and their guests.” In 1937, Duncan MacD. Little reported to
American Cinematographer, “These parties have been copied in other parts of the
country, and are fast becoming one of the notable outgrowths of the amateur
motion picture hobby.”50
The Annual Movie Party was held at Columbia University’s enormous
McMillin Theatre in 1938 before moving to the somewhat smaller (approxi-
mately 500-seat) Barbizon-Plaza Theatre for the 1939 and 1940 parties.51 The
move to the Barbizon-Plaza was decisively to a public venue and admission to
the Movie Parties in 1939 and 1940 was for the first time open to the public. This
movement, from a presentation of one’s own travel films at home, to a casually
selected program, to one that was juried by critics and artists, was significant.
Though the 1937 party was still only open to invited guests, its venue was already
making it distinct from a home movie exhibition. The nondomestic venue along
with these other developments trace the movement of amateur cinema from the
private to public sphere.
8. FROM ANNUAL PARTY TO MULTISCREENING EVENT
Through 1936, the Movie Parties were presented as one-night events. Starting in
1937, however, the Littles began diversifying their screening activities through
year-round events and repeat presentations of the party program. The former
practice began with a series of eight salon screenings of amateur and profes-
sional films that the Littles held from fall 1937 through winter 1938. The 1937–38
salon screenings were held in the Littles’ home and attended by others on a
subscription basis. These salons involved screenings and discussion on a range
of different films, both American and international, including commercial, ama-
teur, and artistic films (everything from Charles Chaplin to Mary Ellen Bute).
The first of these, held in early October 1937, presented both older commercial
71
travel films, like Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life (Merian C. Cooper and Ernest
B. Schoedsack, 1925), alongside more recent amateur productions such as The
Total Eclipse of the Sun (Charles and Robert Coles, 1937), The Circus Is in Town
(Duncan MacD. Little), and I’d Be Delighted To (S. Winston Childs, 1932). The
program was first shown at the Littles’ home and then repeated for the Men’s
Faculty Club at Columbia University. All of the films shown were presented
with turntable accompaniments.52 The screening drew from both older classics
and more recent amateur works but shared a kind of broad global curiosity.
American Cinematographer later reported that the Littles’ film salons were not
“restricted to amateur subjects. . . . In fact, there seems to have been more from
the professional side of the industry than from the amateur.”53 Included in the
next program was The Vagabond (Charles Chaplin, 1916) and the silent feature
The Lost World (Harry O. Hoyt, 1925) as well as amateur films of Historical New
Jersey (Frank Demarest). Later came a program that included early (pre-1914)
films, a Sonja Henie skating film, amateur films of Japan and Its People (Ray
E. Gerstenkorn, 1936), and a newsreel of Shanghai.54
The split focus in these programs between film history and amateur
cinema offered these salon screenings a particular slant on the nascent
film-appreciation movement in the 1930s, placing contemporary amateur film
alongside earlier silent works, both dramatic and nonfictional.55 A later program
in the series was divided between a 1934 amateur film, The Last Review (George
A. Ward, 1934), and The White Hell of Pitz Palu (G. W. Pabst, 1929).56 The March 5,
1938, salon was attended by thirty-three subscribers, and the program included
a college-student-made travel film To the Seven Seas and In from the Sea (Fenno
Jacobs, 1937) alongside The Plow That Broke the Plains (Pare Lorentz, 1936).57
The final program of the salon season included The Grinning Gringo (Douglas
Fairbanks, 1917); Anitra’s Dance, “a modernistic ‘abstract’ adaptation” of this
dance from the “Peer Gynt Suite” by Grieg (Mary Elen Bute and Ted Nemeth,
1936); Death Day [sic] (likely the scene “Day of the Dead” from Que Viva Mexico
by S. Eisenstein, 1932); and Redes (The Wave, Paul Strand, 1936).58 Little reported
that the Fairbanks film was deemed awful and that Anitra’s Dance was “some-
what disappointing.” He continued, “We are much interested in these ‘sight and
sound’ abstractions, but felt that no effect was created in the development of
this particular attempt. It compared in no way with some others that we have
seen, particularly one which we saw this last season, produced some time back
by those clever workers in the British G.P.O. group.”59 Little also diverged from
prominent critical opinion in his assessment of The Wave. He remarked that
“we would prefer to have no propaganda in our films—but would rather they
pursue a middle course of sticking to the ‘facts as they are’ and let those in the
audience draw their own conclusions.” In terms of its artistic value, however,
72
Little notes that “[Paul] Strand shows himself a master cameraman and an artist
of no mean stature—every shot and scene is composed by a master hand.”60
In his commentary, Little thus frames the salon in relation to a sort of critical
discourse around contemporary artistic and political cinema.
The salon was a venue for alternative viewing and testing of critical eval-
uations of film, located outside of the art world and world of film criticism. Here
we find amateur assessments, with their own privileging of a “middle course”
for politics and an effort to distinguish the artistic from the political content of
the works. Amateurs often found their interest in the aesthetic development of
filmmaking at odds with both the rarified language of the avant-garde and the
radical positions of politically engaged filmmakers during the 1930s.61 While
these groups may have overlapped in some respects—such as their noncom-
mercial forms and nontheatrical settings—they were evidently distinct in other
ways that these salons illustrated. Although the Littles deemed the salon series
a success and planned to continue the practice the following year, there is no
evidence that they did so.62 But the Movie Party screenings also proliferated in
other ways, beyond these salons. In spring 1938, the usual Annual Movie Party
was further supplemented by an International Amateur Movie Show, presented
in collaboration with Columbia University’s program in film study (discussed
below). In 1939 and 1940, the primary presentation of the Annual Movie Party
show was supplemented by other repeat screenings: two in 1939 and five in 1940.
9. BRANDING AND LEGITIMIZING THE MOVIE PARTIES
By the late 1930s, the Annual Movie Parties were being renamed in ways that
reflected both their shift to the public eye and also their position as arbiter
of amateur accomplishment in an international context. In 1937 the Littles’
show was rebranded, “The Amateur Cinema—Successor to the Snapshot.” In
1938, the International Amateur Movie Show supplemented the regular Movie
Party. Originally projected for 1939, the First International Amateur Movie Show
was moved up to April 1938 after Columbia University offered its support. In
1939 one screening combined these two elements and was titled “Tenth Annual
Movie Party and International Show of Amateur Motion Pictures” with the sub-
title “The Amateur Cinema—Successor to the Snapshot”; in 1940 it had a similar
title, “Eleventh Annual International Show of Amateur Motion Pictures,” again
with the same subtitle. Notably, these titles emphasize both a media progression
(from snapshot to film) and also an increasingly international show (the final,
1940, Movie Party was called “international,” but all of the films shown were
from the United States). However, while we might associate the word snapshot
primarily with still photography, it was also understood in amateur circles to
designate a particular kind of novice moviemaking. Snapshooters were those
73
who shot movies without attention to technique, that is, taking pictures rather
than making pictures. The distinction was also one that sought to differentiate
between novice home-moviemaking—private, unrefined, rough—and amateur
cinema, which would be understood as a public medium of technically refined
filmmaking that was part of an international movement. This was the develop-
ment that the Annual Movie Parties reflected most clearly: from parlor to the-
ater and from private home movie to public and international amateur cinema.
As the 1938 collaboration with Columbia and at least nominal partic-
ipation from the Museum of Modern Art suggest, the Littles’ activities in the
late 1930s overlapped with other efforts in film education at the time. Dun-
can MacD. Little was also a member of New York’s Metropolitan Motion Pic-
ture Council, which in the mid-1930s brought together prominent members
of the educational, amateur, and nontheatrical film worlds. In the midst of
his activities in the 1937–38 season, Little also contributed a radio broadcast
about planning a film to a series of programs devoted to amateur movies on
WNYC-Municipal Broadcasting System.63 Running parallel to these activities
were the establishment of the Museum of Modern Art’s Film Library in 1935 and
some early forays into film education at Columbia and New York universities
(among others).64 Little was certainly aware of these developments and under-
stood his championing of amateur films to be related: “[T]he cinema is still in a
‘growing’ state, and the amateur cinema is free to roam where it desires. These
Parties of ours can act as a ‘testing ground’ to see how it is developing and what
reaction the ‘lay public’ has to our efforts.”65 Little’s commentaries and articles
printed in the Movie Party programs reinforce many of the common themes
of amateur proponents, including the amateur’s creative freedom and origi-
nality, resourcefulness, and even social relevance, all unfettered by box-office
demands.
10. THE INTERNATIONAL AMATEUR MOVIE SHOW
The 1938 International Amateur Movie Show marked the pinnacle of the Littles’
efforts to align their Movie Parties with established academic and cultural orga-
nizations. It continued the movement from private to public film culture that
was already in motion, and it extended its purview to international amateur
filmmaking. After the success of the 1937 show, Little declared his goal of orga-
nizing an International Amateur Cine Salon. Little’s interest in amateur-film
culture had developed an international dimension beyond his own travel film-
ing. He was a charter member of the Amateur Cinema League and the Metro-
politan Motion Picture Club of New York; he also had personal contacts with
amateurs in Quebec, and in 1936 Little became the North American liaison for
the UK’s Institute of Amateur Cinematography, which in 1937 had a “world tour
74
of amateur films” program in progress. Though Little’s international program

was initially planned for 1939, Columbia University’s Division of Film Study
offered to sponsor the program as part of their “Motion Picture Parade,” and it
was presented a year sooner, in April 1938.
The nature of Little’s collaboration with Columbia University is worth
examining, for both the local and international institutional networks it reveals.
Several contributors to Little’s movie parties over the years were Columbia
University alumni, so it is possible that this collaboration grew out of personal
relationships. It is also possible that the connection was forged by one of the
prominent journalists who had served on his film selection juries. The New
York Sun’s Dan Anderson covered the organization of the International Show
in detail, reporting in May 1937 (and reprinted in American Cinematographer)
on a meeting at the Littles’ home with James Egbert and Russell Potter, the
director and associate director of Columbia University’s Department of Exten-
sion. “Film Study, new division of Columbia University Extension,” Anderson
reported, “will devote two of the twenty weekly cinema sessions to amateur
motion pictures.”66 One of these would be the International Amateur Movie
Show and the other would be Little’s Ninth Annual Movie Party. According to
Anderson, “Probably ten nations will be represented by films chosen in com-
petitions sponsored by amateur cinema organizations to select each country’s
best. The United States, Great Britain, France, Canada and Japan definitely will
be among those showing; so much has already been arranged. There are plenty
of other nations with central organizations of sufficient standing to select a
representative film and any difficulty will probably be in keeping the program
down to a proper length.”67 What is evident in this meeting (and its reporting)
is simultaneously an effort to institutionalize amateur cinema by including it
within Columbia University’s “Motion Picture Parade” and also to forge new
relationships between American and foreign amateur-cinema organizations.
Duncan MacD. Little and his International Amateur Movie Show stood at the
center of these efforts.
In addition to Columbia University, American Cinematographer played an
important role in the organization of these events, assuring the Littles that they
could have the first showing in the East of the winning film in their 1937 con-
test.68 The films for the Annual Movie Party would be selected by an expanded
version of the usual jury, but for the International Amateur Movie Show, ama-
teurs were advised to submit their films to their local or national groups as Little
would only be in touch with those groups, not with the individual filmmakers
themselves (fig. 3).69 “No prizes and no awards of any kind” would be presented
at either of these events, but a film leader would be provided indicating that
the film had been selected for the program and a certificate of merit given.70
75
Fig. 3: The Little Movie Parties were connected to an international network of amateur movie
organizations. (Amateur Cinema subject files, Margaret Herrick Library)
In addition to the guidelines announced previously about the nomination of

international films from various country organizations, Columbia University
set out a few other rules: “Film Study has prepared the following memoranda
pertaining to the International Show: 1. Films submitted should portray some
aspect or aspects of life in the country of origin; 2. Only amateur films will be
76
screened. They may be either 16mm or 8mm. . . . silent or sound (records); black
and white or color; 3. length requested not more than 400 ft.”71 These guidelines
marked a further and more formalized set of parameters for the screening
than the Littles’ previous events. American Cinematographer provided frequent
updates about the preparation for the International Movie Show and especially
the cooperation of various international organizations.72 “And so the list grows,”
reported American Cinematographer, “from the Orient and from the antipodes—
from Europe and from ‘Our Lady of the Snows’—almost without exception, the
word is always, ‘We will cooperate.’ Amateurs of the cinema from all parts of
the world are standing shoulder to shoulder with Mr. Little, and helping as they
can to make the International Show a success.”73
The Ninth Annual Movie Party took place on March 23, 1938, and the
International Movie Show was held two weeks later on April 6, both at the
McMillin Academic Theatre at Columbia University. The Movie Party was
attended by “a large audience” who enjoyed seven films, the majority of them
travel films by American moviemakers.74 The program of the International
Show included eight films from different countries: To the Ships of Sydney
(James A. Sherlock, Australia, 1936), Mount Zao (Khoji Tsukamoto, Japan,
1937), Fourth in Hand: A Fantasy of the Card Table (Meteor Film Producing
Society, Scotland, 1936), L’Histoire d’un Soldat (A Soldier’s Story, Čeněk Zah-
radníček and Vladimir Smejkal, Czechoslovakia, 1935), Gloire a l’eau, (Albert
Tessier, Canada, 1935), Driftwood (Ace Movies, England, 1933), Bommerli
(Richard Groschopp, Germany, 1936), and Prize Winner (J. Kinney Moore, USA,
1936). In addition, two further films that arrived too late to add to the printed
program were shown: A Province of Poland (Tadeusz Jankowski, Poland, 1937)
and Hell UnLTD (Norman McLaren and Helen Biggar, Scotland, 1936) (figs. 4
and 5).
Remarkably, all but two of these films—Prize Winner and A Province of
Poland—have survived.75 They present a wide range of different subjects and
approaches to amateur filmmaking, from chronicles of surrounding places
(Ships, Mount Zao, Gloire a l’Eau, Poland) to polished fictional works (Fourth
in Hand, Driftwood, Bommerli, Prize Winner) to experimental antiwar films
(L’Histoire d’un Soldat, Hell UnLTD). The films also present different production
modes (individual filmmakers, collective/club productions). Three of the ten are
color films. Some of the films were previous winners in the American Cinema-
tographer amateur-movie contests, while others were prizewinners in Europe
or elsewhere; especially noteworthy is that Japanese amateur moviemaker Khoji
Tsukamoto had films in both programs.76 Certainly, the variety of types and
international origins of these films would have stood in stark contrast to the
Hollywood fare presented at commercial movie theaters during this time.
77
Fig. 4: Mount Zao (Khoji Tsukamoto, Japan). (Courtesy East Anglian Film Archive)
Fig. 5: Příběh vojáka (A Soldier’s Story, Čeněk Zahradníček and Vladimír Šmejkal,
Czechoslovakia). (Courtesy Czech National Film Archive)
There was little coverage of the International Movie Show beyond Little’s
own account in American Cinematographer, so it is difficult to gauge its success
in bringing these films to a wider audience. Little notes that “perhaps 400”
attended the screening but that a snowstorm likely kept many more at home; the
theater’s own records tally only 360 attendees and remark, “Weather—Terrible!
78
Snow + slush.”77 In the cavernous, thousand-seat McMillin Theatre, this must

have seemed like a very small crowd. A 1940 article reflected on the Columbia
University–sponsored year in somewhat negative terms: “[This program], while
a grand idea, and an arrangement of which Mr. and Mrs. Little were proud,
had lost something that they did not like losing. Held in McMillan Theatre, the
atmosphere was cold and lacked the friendliness and sense of comradeship that
permeated their previous shows. Something still had to be done, for not only did
they themselves regret this change of spirit, but their friends all spoke about it
and deplored it.”78 Perhaps it was inevitable that the warm atmosphere that
the Littles had spent years developing around their Movie Parties could not be
sustained in such a big hall. And maybe the institutionalization of the Littles’
amateur-movie screenings also made a difference in the way the event was
experienced and received. While the expansion of their network to include both
global participants and a prestigious university may have seemed like progress,
it was not perceived that way by the Littles and their circle. Did amateur cinema
flourish under the conditions of their separation from these more established
and officially sanctioned entities? What had seemed to be a wonderful endorse-
ment of the amateur movie world in its planning left a bad taste in the mouth
of amateurs themselves.
11. PROMOTING INTERNATIONAL FELLOWSHIP
The 1939 event marked a reconsolidation of the Annual Movie Party into one
program. It was open to the public and its attendance was reportedly five
hundred people. The origins of the eight films shown were diverse: half were
American and the others were from Australia, the Philippines, Japan, and
Poland. Presented without official affiliation to Columbia or MoMA (though
both were still represented on the jury), the 1939 edition was organized as a
benefit for a charitable organization and held at the Barbizon-Plaza Theatre.
And despite the lack of a major institutional partnership, the 1939 Movie Party
attracted much more attention from the press than in previous years. In the
New York Times, Bosley Crowther wrote an extensive preview of the party and
ultimately served on the party’s jury the following year. His account notes the
diverse and international nature of the program.79 Tadeusz Jankowski was
again represented on the program, this time with the extant film A Country
Wedding, which had won the grand prize in the Union Internationale du Cin-
ema d’Amateur contest the previous year.80 The strong presence of interna-
tional amateur films in the Littles’ late parties suggests an important role for
amateur films. In a personal account of the pleasures derived from the hobby
of filmmaking, Duncan MacD. Little noted fellowship, and particularly inter-
national connections, as especially significant: “There is a fellowship among
79
‘movie-makers’ the world over, and it is a fellowship not of ‘lip-service,’ but

of a great ‘reaching out’ of hands in helpfulness. It is a fellowship that as we
discover it, we must treasure and hold sacred, lest, by the thoughtless, it be
abused and crushed before it has a chance to grow.”81 As if to emphasize the
bonds of international fellowship, the Movie Party programs included pages
listing “Cooperating Organizations Overseas,” such as amateur cinema groups
in India, Hungary, Australia, Germany, England, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and
Japan (among others).
The 1939 program notes also alluded to the threat of war that was loom-
ing: “European happenings continue to cast their shadows, even upon our
ANNUAL MOVIE PARTIES,” it noted, adding that promised films from Spain,
Austria, and Czechoslovakia had not arrived. Here we find an interest in pro-
moting amateur cinema in support of international peace and understanding
emerging most evidently. Though not always explicitly political, affluent ama-
teurs like Little and his guests often positioned amateur filmmaking—and the
international exchange it involved—as intrinsically antiwar. This was not an
especially unusual position for the time since, as John M. Kinder writes, “by the
late 1930s . . . no arena of US culture was untouched by antiwar sentiment.”82
Thanks to the efforts of groups like World Peaceways, the desire for world peace
“came to be more talked about, more written about, more sincerely considered
by the plain people, by leaders of opinion, and by the government itself” than at
any point in US history.83 In this context, we find a shift from snapshot-travel
films as holiday planning to a more ambitious blend of the travel film’s global
humanism, international pacifism, and the artistic aspirations of amateur
cinema.
12. OSCARS FOR AMATEURS
The eleventh and final Annual Movie Party took place in 1940. The New York
screening was again held at the Barbizon-Plaza Theatre before travelling to
Newark, Dartmouth College, University of New Hampshire, and Boston for
additional shows. A significant new feature of the 1940 show was the creation
of a physical object (a plaque) to commemorate the films selected for showing.
“Hollywood has its OSCARS—!” reads the heading on one page, “and so have
we—!!”84 Positioning itself as a kind of amateur Academy Awards, Little voiced
the role that the Movie Parties played in the film world: “As the scope of these
Shows has become enlarged, so also has grown a definite desire that there can
be provided a ‘recognized screen’ upon which can be exhibited the worthwhile
results of Amateur Film Producers, whoever and wherever they may be, thus
assuring these producers an opportunity that more persons may see their work,
than just the home circle and nearby friends, and that this ‘recognized screen’
80
may offer those interested the opportunity of seeing the worth-while amateur
efforts from near at hand and far away.”85 Little’s comments once again forged
a close link between amateur creative filmmaking and international fellowship,
and the 1940 program again noted the effect of war on its content. Even though
the printed program acknowledged the assistance of other international orga-
nizations, the program of films was made up—for the first time in several
years—of exclusively American-made films. Perhaps this was attributable to
the war, either directly, as in the case of Polish, Austrian, and Czechoslovakian
filmmakers, or indirectly, with the restricted movement of motion-picture films
across borders from the UK, Canada, and Australia.
CONCLUSION
By 1940, the Annual Movie Parties had transformed in ways that were entirely
unforeseen at their origins. The exhibition protocols traced in this essay demon-
strate the incremental ways in which this transformation took place, with small
shifts in the manner of film presentation and curation both responding to and
resulting in new understandings of what amateur cinema could become. From
their origins as domestic, private events the Movie Parties gradually became
a forum for the nascent amateur-cinema movement. Significantly, the Littles’
activities developed distinctly but alongside the main sites of amateur cinema’s
institutionalization in the United States. Little was a member (but not leader)
of the Amateur Cinema League and an occasional contributor to publications
like Movie Makers and American Cinematographer. Instead of promoting ama-
teur moviemaking in general, though, the Littles’ Annual Movie Parties played
a more specific role in formalizing the presentation of amateur movies. This
involved a negotiation of circumstances under which the exhibition of amateur
films could become a public activity.
In the late 1930s, Duncan MacD. Little assembled a network of local and
international amateur groups into alignment with coalescing ideas about non-
commercial film aesthetics and emergent discourses in film appreciation and
education. The Littles’ Movie Parties were, for a short time, a significant locus
for the institutionalization of amateur cinema in the United States. Little first
drew together a variety of figures who were active in the press and held other
important cultural roles to serve on the juries for his parties. This developed
into a more full-blown collaboration with Columbia University and various
international organizations for the 1938 International Amateur Movie Show.
While some of these processes of formalizing amateur-film presentation seemed
to have a negative effect on the friendly atmosphere that had been fostered at
Little’s early movie parties, the effort to connect amateurs across the globe con-
tinued through the final years of the decade. The aspirations for this movement
81
came to an abrupt termination with the onset of World War Two, from which
the amateur cinema world would emerge in a very different—less public and
less international—form.
Notes
This research was completed with support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Canada and the Calgary Institute for the Humanities. The author would like to acknowledge the assistance
of Lucas Anderson, Lee Carruthers, Sheena Manabat, Isabel Lara, Stephen Tapert, and Andrew Watts.
1. See Melinda Stone and Dan Streible, eds., “Small-Gauge and Amateur Film,” special issue, Film History
15, no. 2 (2003); and Charles Tepperman, Amateur Cinema: The Rise of North American Moviemaking
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015). Researchers have also examined contemporaneous
developments outside North America. See Heather Nicholson, Amateur Film: Meaning and Prac-
tice, 1927–77 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012); Ryan Shand and Ian Craven, eds.,
Small-Gauge Storytelling: Discovering the Amateur Fiction Film (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
2013); Valérie Vignaux and Benoît Turquety, eds., L’Amateur en cinéma, un autre paradigme: Histoire,
esthétique, marges et institutions (Paris: Association française de recherche sur l’histoire du cinéma,
2016); Laura Rascaroli, Gwenda Young, and Barry Monahan, eds., Amateur Filmmaking: The Home
Movie, the Archive, the Web (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014); and Lila Silva Foster, “Cinema
amador brasileiro: História, discursos e práticas (1926–1959)” (PhD diss., Escola de Comunicações e
Artes, São Paulo, 2016).
2. “A Word as to these Shows,” program for Eleventh Annual International Show of Amateur Motion
Pictures (1940), Amateur Films subject files (AF), Margaret Herrick Library (MHL), Academy for
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, CA.
3. Haidee Wasson, “Electric Homes! Automatic Movies! Efficient Entertainment! 16mm and the Cin-
ema’s Domestication in the 1920s,” Cinema Journal, Summer 2009.
4. Lisa Gitelman, Always Already New: Media, History and the Data of Culture (Cambridge: MIT Press,
2006), 6–7.
5. Gitleman, Always Already New, 7.
6. These activities can be traced via the Media History Digital Library online collection of Movie Makers
and American Cinematographer magazines, as well as the database of amateur-movie clubs at www
.amateurcinema.org.
7. Accounts of the Movie Parties can be found in newspapers and magazines, as well as programs for
the 1936 (seventh) to 1940 (eleventh) Movie Parties, which survive at the Margaret Herrick Library
of the Academy for Motion Picture Arts and Science. A complete list of the films shown at the Movie
Parties can be found on the Amateur Movie Database (http://www.amateurcinema.org/index.php
/amdb); most of the films are presumed lost but published descriptions of these films provide us
with some sense of what was shown.
8. Duncan MacD. Little, “The Evolution of a Movie Party,” Filmo Topics, Christmas 1935, reprinted in
1936 Movie Party program, AF, MHL.
9. Little, “The Evolution of a Movie Party.”
10. Tom Gunning, “The Whole World within Reach: Travel Images without Borders,” in Virtual Voyages:
Cinema and Travel, ed. Jeffrey Ruoff (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 27.
11. Jeffrey Ruoff, “Introduction: The Filmic Fourth Dimension: Cinema as Audiovisual Space,” in Virtual
Voyages: Cinema and Travel, ed. Jeffrey Ruoff (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 13.
82
12. Liz Czach has traced the activities of amateur travel-film lecturers during the post–World War Two
era. See Liz Czach, “ʻA Thrill Every Minute!’: Travel Adventure Film Lectures in the Postwar Era,” in
Cinephemera: Archives, Ephemeral Cinema, and New Screen Histories in Canada, ed. Zoë Druick and
Gerda Cammaer (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2014).
13. Harry Burdick, “Movie Party Becomes Annual Society Event,” American Cinematographer, June
1936, 258.
14. “Evolution of a Movie Party,” 1937 Movie Party Program, AF, MHL.
15. Films of ocean travel are also common among archival amateur-film collections, especially those
of affluent travelers from the late 1920s, like Hiram Percy Maxim. See Charles Tepperman, “Hiram
Percy Maxim, the Amateur Cinema League, and Aesthetics of Amateur Filmmaking,” in Amateur
Movie Making: Aesthetics of the Everyday in New England Film, 1915–1960, ed. Martha McNamara
and Karan Sheldon (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017).
16. Jennifer Peterson, “ʻThe Nation’s First Playground’: Travel Films and the American West,” in Ruoff,
Virtual Voyages, 87.
17. “A Floating Darkroom,” Amateur Movie Makers, February 1927, 26.
18. Duncan MacD. Little, “International Salon Is Planned by Little,” American Cinematographer, May
1937, 205. Clearly not all the attendees brought films.
19. The film was given a special mention in the ACL’s Ten Best contest for its “uniformly fine technique.”
“The Ten Best,” Movie Makers, December 1931, 685. See also James Moore, “Closeups—What Ama-
teurs Are Doing,” Movie Makers, March 1931, 177.
20. Rick Altman, “From Lecturer’s Prop to Industrial Product: The Early History of Travel Films,” in Ruoff,
Virtual Voyages, 61.
21. Altman, “From Lecturer’s Prop,” 76.
22. Aspects of this tradition would continue via explorer-film circuits in the 1940s and 1950s; see Czach,
“ʻA Thrill Every Minute!’”
23. On the history of domestic leisure and entertainment, see Richard Butsch, The Making of American
Audiences: From Stage to Television, 1750–1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); and
Melanie Dawson, Laboring to Play: Home Entertainment and the Spectacle of Middle-Class Cultural
Life, 1850–1920 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005).
24. Little, “Evolution of a Movie Party,” 1936 Movie Party Program.
25. Dana Benelli, “Hollywood and the Attractions of the Travelogue,” in Ruoff, Virtual Voyages, 192–93.
26. “Evolution of a Movie Party,” 1937 Movie Party Program.
27. Little, “Evolution of a Movie Party,” 1936 Movie Party Program. Movie Makers reported on the film
as well; see “Closeups—What Amateurs Are Doing,” Movie Makers, June 1933, 226.
29. Probably the same film as The Circus, which won Little an Honorable Mention in the 1934 American
Cinematographer contest.
30. Jones first won ACL Ten Best recognition for Canadian Capers in 1932 and revised this film and
renamed it Under the Maple Leaf. Updated versions of Under the Maple Leaf were awarded Honor-
able Mentions in the 1933 and 1935 Movie Makers contests, as he continued to add new footage
and re-edit the old.
31. Hamilton Jones, “Sound It Yourself,” Movie Makers, July 1934, 275.
83
32. Jones, “Sound It Yourself,” 298.

33. Little, “International Salon Is Planned by Little,” 205.
35. Hansen was well-known for his Kodacolor films and had presented Colorful Bits of Europe at the 1934
movie party. For more about Hansen and Kodacolor, see Tepperman, “Color Unlimited: Amateur
Color Cinema in the 1930s,” in Color and the Moving Image, ed. Simon Brown, Sarah Street, and Liz
Watkins (London: Routledge, 2012).
36. “Gwladys Wynne Sills, 78, Ex-Actress, Dies in Paris,” New York Times, November 27, 1964.
37. Gwladys Wynn Sills, “An Amateur Films the Soviets,” Movie Makers, July 1934, 278. The next year
Sills would present Impressions of Yugoslavia, and in 1936 she showed her Moroccan Cities, which
was also named one of the Movie Makers’ Ten Best of the year. “The Ten Best,” Movie Makers,
December 1936, 542.
39. “Closeups—What Filmers Are Doing,” Movie Makers, May 1936, 212.
40. Eileen Creelman and Frank Nugent were major figures in film journalism in New York during this
period. Creelman would serve on the selection jury for the Littles’ Movie Parties for the rest of the
decade; Nugent served on the jury on a couple of occasions and was replaced by other film critics
in other years (including Bosley Crowther in 1940). Benda was well-known in the 1920s and 1930s
as an illustrator and creator of stylized masks of both national types and emotional states.
41. Haidee Wasson traces this development in Museum Movies: The Museum of Modern Art and the
Birth of Art Cinema (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).
42. The full 1938 jury included Dan Anderson (New York Sun), Howard Barnes (New York Herald Tribune
critic), Wladysaw T. Benda, Eileen Creelman, Arthur L. Gale, Mack C. Gorham (Columbia University),
George P. Mills (Pathé News), Frank S. Nugent, and Russell Potter (Columbia University). “Movie
Party—March 23,” New York Times, March 6, 1938, 36; and “Closeups—What Filmers Are Doing,”
Movie Makers, March 1938, 110.
43. The only evident exceptions to this policy were the Cunard films at the first Movie Party and a film
(Jim Jam Jems) borrowed from the ACL library at the fourth Movie Party (1933).
45. “Closeups—What Filmers Are Doing,” Movie Makers, May 1936, 212. Both of these award-winning
films were also cited for numerous other awards (Happy Day winning a Daily Mail prize in the UK,
In the Beginning being named one of the ACL Ten Best of 1935).
46. Happy Day is held by the East Anglian Film Archive; In the Beginning is held by the U.S. National
Archives (NARA).
47. For a closer reading of In the Beginning, see Tepperman, “Mechanical Craftsmanship: Amateurs
Making Practical Films,” in Useful Cinema, ed. Charles Acland and Haidee Wasson (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 2011): 289–314.
49. “Closeups—What Filmers Are Doing,” Movie Makers, May 1936, 212.
50. “Littles’ Eighth Movie Party Will Draw on Nine Countries,” American Cinematographer, March
1937, 115.
51. A preview of the 1938 Movie Party was held at the Salle des Artistes.
84
52. American Cinematographer remarked on the well-rounded nature of the program, contrasting
elements of “drama, astronomy and science, the battle of primitive people for bare existence, display
of the carnival spirit in a modern city, and of comedy.” “Littles Are Hosts at Real Motion Picture
Evening,” American Cinematographer, November 1937, 472.
53. “Little’s Film Evenings Have Auspicious Start,” American Cinematographer, December 1937, 523.
54. Several of these films were from the rapidly expanding Castle Films releases, which distributed one-
reel newsreels and silent films on 8mm and 16mm.
55. Dana Polan traces the early history of film appreciation courses in universities during this period in
Scenes of Instruction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).
56. “‘Pitz Palu,’ Makes Genuine Hit When Revived at Fourth Evening,” American Cinematographer,
February 1938, 85.
57. “Tales of the Seas Lead Program at Littles’ Sixth Film Evening,” American Cinematographer, April
1938, 164.
58. Duncan MacD. Little, “Littles’ Subscription Evenings End Good Year and Will Continue,” American
Cinematographer, June 1938, 256.
59. Little, “Littles’ Subscription Evenings.” Little’s interest in avant-garde filmmaking is also elaborated
in the programs, especially the 1938 program which included the article “Amateur Avant Garde,”
by B. Vivan Braun, reprinted from Home Movies and Home Talkies, December 1937.
60. Little, “Littles’ Subscription Evenings.”
61. These issues are taken up in more detail in Tepperman, Amateur Cinema, esp. chap. 7: “ʻThe Amateur
Takes Leadership’: Amateur Film, Experimentation, and the Aesthetic Vanguard.”
62. Little, “Littles’ Subscription Evenings.”
63. “Duncan Little Broadcasts ‘Film Planning’ over WNYC,” American Cinematographer, February
1938, 78.
64. Wasson, Museum Movies; and Polan, Scenes of Instruction.
65. “International Salon Is Planned by Little,” 205.
66. “Columbia University Sponsoring Little’s International Salon,” American Cinematographer, June
1937, 251.
67. Quoted in “Columbia University Sponsoring Little’s International Salon,” 251.
68. “Columbia University Sponsoring Little’s International Salon,” 261.
69. “Columbia University Sponsoring Little’s International Salon,” 261.
70. “International Meet Set for April 6 at Columbia,” American Cinematographer, August 1937, 340.
71. “International Meet Set for April 6 at Columbia,” 340.
72. “Wide World Supports Columbia Movie Show,” American Cinematographer, November 1937, 472.
73. “Wide World Supports Columbia Movie Show,” 472.
74. The notable exceptions to these were Mystery in the Forest by Japanese filmmaker Khoji Tsukamoto,
and the dramatic film Way to Victory. Dan Anderson, “Your Camera and Mine: An Evening of Excel-
lent Amateur Cinema,” New York Sun, March 26, 1938.
75. The subject matter of A Province in Poland is suggested by other extant works by the same filmmaker.
85
76. Space doesn’t permit a detailed discussion of these films, but information about them can be
found at amateurcinema.org, and a reconstruction of the 1938 International Amateur Movie
Show program with a selection of extant films was presented at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto
in January 2018. Little’s own assessment of the films was published in American Cinematographer:
Duncan MacD. Little, “Strikingly Good Show Was That of International Amateur Movie,” American
Cinematographer, May 1938, 204.
77. “House Report: Movie Parade—Amateur Movie Show, 4/6/38,” Lecture Card Index, Columbia
University Archives.
78. “Littles’ Eleventh Show Opens to Crowd,” American Cinematographer, May 1940, 222–23, 236.
79. Bosley Crowther, “Amateur Film Night,” New York Times, April 9, 1939.
80. “Littles’ Guests View Films by Eight Amateurs,” New York Herald Tribune, April 15, 1939.
81. 1938 Movie Party Program, AF, MHL.
82. John M. Kinder, Paying with Their Bodies: American War and the Problem of the Disabled Veteran
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 220.
83. Kinder, Paying with Their Bodies. ACL member and later president John Hansen screened at least
one of his films at a World Peaceways event in the 1930s; see “Practical Films,” Movie Makers, March
1937, 128.
84. 1940 Movie Party Program, AF, MHL.
85. 1940 Movie Party Program.
Charles Tepperman is an associate professor in the Department of Commu-

nication, Media and Film at the University of Calgary. Tepperman has pub-
lished articles on early cinema in Canada and on nontheatrical film culture
and technology. He is the author of Amateur Cinema: The Rise of North American
Moviemaking, 1923–1960 and is the principal investigator of the Amateur Movie
Database Project (http://www.amateurcinema.org/index.php/amdb).

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“A Recognized Screen”: The New York Annual Movie Parties from Parlor to Public

Author(s): Charles Tepperman

“A Recognized Screen”: The New York Annual

KEYWORDS: movie nights, amateur-film exhibition, Duncan MacD. Little, recognized

CHARLES TEPPERMAN | A Reco gnized Screen

for examining the emergence and efforts to institutionalize certain aspects of

Film History | Volume 30.1

in numbered parts, each of which highlights the establishment of or change to

CHARLES TEPPERMAN | A Reco gnized Screen

Film History | Volume 30.1

CHARLES TEPPERMAN | A Reco gnized Screen

3. ADDING SOUND, IMPROVING PROJECTION

Film History | Volume 30.1

sound accompaniment scored with new variations at each presentation. Jones

CHARLES TEPPERMAN | A Reco gnized Screen

Film History | Volume 30.1

CHARLES TEPPERMAN | A Reco gnized Screen

6. NEW CATEGORIES AND AWARD-WINNING FILMS

Film History | Volume 30.1

CHARLES TEPPERMAN | A Reco gnized Screen

Film History | Volume 30.1

CHARLES TEPPERMAN | A Reco gnized Screen

Film History | Volume 30.1

CHARLES TEPPERMAN | A Reco gnized Screen

of amateur films” program in progress. Though Little’s international program

Film History | Volume 30.1

In addition to the guidelines announced previously about the nomination of

CHARLES TEPPERMAN | A Reco gnized Screen

Film History | Volume 30.1

CHARLES TEPPERMAN | A Reco gnized Screen

Snow + slush.”77 In the cavernous, thousand-seat McMillin Theatre, this must

Film History | Volume 30.1

‘movie-makers’ the world over, and it is a fellowship not of ‘lip-service,’ but

CHARLES TEPPERMAN | A Reco gnized Screen

Film History | Volume 30.1

CHARLES TEPPERMAN | A Reco gnized Screen

Film History | Volume 30.1

32. Jones, “Sound It Yourself,” 298.

CHARLES TEPPERMAN | A Reco gnized Screen

Film History | Volume 30.1

Charles Tepperman is an associate professor in the Department of Commu-

CHARLES TEPPERMAN | A Reco gnized Screen

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