Penned by O. Th. Stein, a prolific contributor to German-language film magazines in the early 1910s, this article is perhaps most striking for its repeated assertion that its object, “amateur cinema,” does not yet exist. Despite this, one can already identify numerous prototypical devices currently associated with amateur filmmaking at the time Stein was writing in 1913, most notably the various techniques for animated portraiture such as the French “Cinéphote” or the so-called “Salonkinematograph” of Georges Bettini (both covered elsewhere by the same magazine in which Stein’s article first appeared). Indeed, Stein himself alludes to such devices — and the economy of domestic family films they would help make possible — towards the end of the article. But Stein’s understanding of amateur cinema implies something beyond technical prerequisites, something most palpable in his repeated invocations of the idea of a “public sphere” (Öffentlichkeit), “public life” (öffentliches Leben) and “public education” (Volkserziehung). Amateur cinema, the article suggests, is not simply a practice of capturing domestic moments for private home viewing, but a process that relies on an entire public infrastructure of community movie theaters and a steady supply of content — often locally produced — for public edification. This includes educational and scientific films, news reports, travel films, reports on heritage sites and other areas of public interest. This model of amateur cinema qua public sphere rests, to be sure, both on a class-based imaginary, expressly reserved for “educated professions” (gebildete Stände), and on a gendered one, construed around patriarchal conceptions of domesticity and the public sphere. Contextualizing this model requires attention to at least two forces at work in the early 1910s in Germany and Austria.
The first is the widespread “cinema reform” movement, which emerged in reaction to the explosion of entertainment movie theaters in the early 1910s and warned the public continuously about the physiological, mental, and moral dangers of cinema, especially for children. Stein’s article alludes to that movement at the outset when he observes how much “suspicion” popular cinema has generated in recent years. And a major part of his argument is that amateur cinema could help to change attitudes towards cinema writ large, and counter the more reactive and alarmist claims of cinema reformers, by contributing to a transformation of movie theaters from dens of sensationalist kitsch to edifying community institutions. In this, Stein’s article aligns itself decidedly with the larger mission of the journal in which it appeared. A specialty journal for scientific and educational film, Film und Lichtbild explicitly adopted a remit to focus on matters beyond quotidian reformist complaints about cinema’s “harmful excesses” (schädliche Auswüchse) in order to harness the “undeniable advantages of cinematographic technology for various branches of science.” Amateur involvement with cinema was envisioned as playing a crucial role here, and Film und Lichtbild was, in many ways, a journal dedicated to fostering an amateur film community fashioned after the model of amateur science associations.
This brings us to the second force that should be understood in order to appreciate Stein’s advocacy for amateur cinema, and more broadly, the public sphere he envisions for society: the associational culture of the time, which encompassed a highly formalized network of clubs, societies and associations (Vereine in German), which had developed in the nineteenth century to regulate and “elevate” the growing leisure time of the middle classes. Associational culture often sought to provide models for collective self-betterment (among other ways, via a vibrant circuit of public lectures, which were often illustrated with the aid of slides). Stein alludes to the types of amateur associations that could make use of the new tools of cinema for the “tasks of public education.” These include not just amateur science groups but also athletic clubs (which could consist of hunting groups and alpinist associations), travel clubs, and various heritage societies (who could produce beautiful cinematographic images of the Heimat). Indeed, he explicitly calls for amateur cinematography groups to follow the model of their forerunners in amateur photography in this regard. And while the text may not spell out exactly which contributions amateur photography made to civic associations, it is worth recalling that photography clubs (such as the Deutsche Gesellschaft von Freunden der Photographie or the Freie photographische Vereinigung) were — as Christian Joschke has shown — deeply invested in the project of edifying photographic practices by mobilizing them as tools for public education to mediate between the world of professional learned societies and popular recreation.
Such is the vision that this article lays out for amateur cinema: by transforming the infrastructure of cinema — creating community theaters that could work with local amateur associations to create a consistent supply of quality amateur films — amateur filmmakers would transform attitudes towards cinema, and thereby also influence the development of cinema as such. Such a sweeping, generational reform of cinema, never quite came to pass. Film as entertainment would remain the dominant model in Germany and elsewhere, and amateur cinema would be increasingly relegated to the sphere of “home movies.” But Stein’s vision reveals much about the ways in which amateur cinema was conceived at a time when distinctions between “professional” and “amateur” filmmaking were only still taking shape, and when the larger world of “amateur” activity was deeply bound up with ideas about the public sphere as a space of popular edification.