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  • Home Viewing:Pornography and Amateur Film Collections, A Case Study
  • Dwight Swanson (bio)

Every general archival film collection of any significant size almost inevitably ends up with some pornographic films in its holdings. Pornography, when it is kept, is often stashed away in dark recesses of collections, joked about, infrequently cataloged, and generally ignored. My first archival job was with a historical society's photography collection, and I was there for almost two years before I was told about a collection of hard-core pornographic pictures that was kept in a "secret" folder in an obscure drawer in the stacks. I suspect that this is a fairly common occurrence, but by denying the existence of pornography in archival collections, or by being prissy about them, we are skewing the historic record and betraying our roles as keepers of the totality of cinematic history.

In regional film collections, home movies have naturally attracted the lion's share of attention of late because of the unique way they document life within a region. Frequently, though, home-movie collections included 8mm and 16mm commercial films alongside the amateur and family films. Eastman Kodak realized early on that there was a large potential market for the home distribution of film prints. The Kodascope Libraries film rental service was established almost immediately after the introduction of 16mm stock in 1923, and the sales of Kodak Cinegraph titles followed six years later. Before long, private distribution companies such as Castle Films and Blackhawk Films were capitalizing on the home film market. Their catalogs consisted largely of cartoons or slapstick comedies starring major silent film stars, as well as other genres such as dramas, series, documentaries, and newsreels. Previously, these commercial films that accompanied home-movie collections were either not accessioned or were largely ignored by regional film archives, condemned to the fringes of collections. Although it is understandable that these films were (and still are) given a low preservation priority within the regional archives, their existence does broaden our understanding of the entire cinematic experience by showing the nexus of amateur and commercial film, and they remind us that the two were never diametrically opposed. Home-movie makers (and most often this was "Dad") were also frequently curators of home film libraries. Take a look, for instance, at the January 1950 issue of Home Movies, one of the most popular magazines for amateur filmmakers, and you will find among the advertisements for amateur film equipment a full page ad for Castle Films, with 8mm and 16mm prints of Hopalong Cassidy, Abbott and Costello, and Woody Woodpecker shorts. And further back in the magazine, you'll find the mail-order advertisements for Sweethearts of Burlesque, a film from Quality Pictures Co., Goldielocks Goes Glamorous from Seaside Films, and Studies in Beauty from Fine Arts Film Production.

The following case study comes from Northeast Historic Film (NHF), a regional archive not generally known for its pornography collection. What it is best known for, I think, is its home-movie collections, and the particular collection discussed here shows the interesting relationship between the two and how pornography has been used in the domestic realm. Although pornographic and "stag" films—the short, sexually oriented films so named because they were intended for men's parties—existed in the same continuum as other commercial home movies, clearly they were shown in very [End Page 136] different circumstances. It is not known where the family's pornographic films discussed here were purchased or how often they were projected, but suffice to say that the prints were not in pristine condition.


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Figure 1.

Home Movies, 1951

Although regional film collections like Northeast Historic Film's by definition focus on the moving images of a region, cofounders David Weiss and Karan Sheldon have always had an enlightened attitude about collecting home movies in that NHF did not just collect the movies made in the region (which covers Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts) but also all films related to the region. In terms of home movies this includes the films that were shown at home by families as well as the ones that they themselves filmed. One...

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