Amateur widescreen; or, some forgotten skirmishes in the battle of the gauges

In the 1950s, the manufacturers Pathé, Dimaphot and Emel briefly tried to capture an elusive amateur market for widescreen home-movie technology. In postwar Britain, particularly in the 1960s, a group of ambitious amateurs established themselves as the Widescreen Association. Their ingenious and often practical designs led to new widescreen film formats and the construction of adapted cameras and projectors. This historical essay challenges notions of amateur and professional and what we understand to be the motivations of amateur filmmakers. It concludes with a plea for the preservation of this neglected aspect of film history.