Journal articles on the topic 'American Manuscripts Bibliography Catalogues'

Purpose The purpose of this paper is Identifying the degree of compatibility of the current situation of the Persian bibliographic records (PBRs) with FRBR, as well as identifying the possible approaches and strategies for appropriate application of the model to Persian. The required data were gathered via two checklists were devised for the purpose of this research and each of which was dedicated to “Shahname” and “Nahjolbalaghe”. Also, to determine the characteristics of a suitable functional requirements for bibliographic records (FRBR) model for Iran, 18 implementation projects round the world were surveyed and analysed. Results of the study show that some FRBR requirements were readily available in Persian bibliographic records (PBRs), but in some cases, there are some deficiencies due to some likely reasons, such as lack of commitment to the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules 2, specifications of the library software structure and neglecting bibliographic and family relations in catalogues. Design/methodology/approach The main goal of this research was to identify the degree of compatibility of the current situation of the PBRs with FRBR, as well as identifying the possible approaches and strategies for appropriate application of the model to Persian records. Research publication was 3,502 records in the National Bibliography of Iran for “Shahname” and “Nahjolbalaghe” of which 365 records were selected using systematic sampling method. Resources types included in the study were books, audio-visual resources, geographical resources, theses, lithographic books, manuscripts and journals. Findings Results of the study also showed that the appropriate method for implementing FRBR in Iran is the comparative model. According to this model, the current records are saved while they are compared to FRBR model, as a result of which, anomalies are identified and resolved. In another part of this research, 16 important challenges that could exist in implementing the model in Iran were identified and introduced. Also, eight characteristics of a suitable implementation model in Iran are introduced. Originality/value FRBR, is a conceptual entity-relationship model, released by IFLA and aimed to determine a minimum level of catalogue functions based on user’s needs. This model consists of four main parts: entities, attributes, relations and user tasks. This research has studied the feasibility of implementing application of the model to Iranian library records. Any research before the present paper (based on PhD thesis) has not been conducted yet in Iran.

A REPORT ON STUDIES ABOUT THEODORE AGALLIANOS (1966-2011)<br /><br /><br />C. Patrineles devoted his doctoral thesis to Theodore Agallianos’ life and writings and also edited two of his speeches. In this still authoritative book, he listed all the manuscripts containing Agallianos’ works and all the existing editions. This article provides an update of this information in light of recent studies; it also catalogues the entire bibliography published about Agallianos since 1966.<br /> <br />MARIE-HELENE BLANCHET<br />

The Art Section of the Library of the Centre for Historical Studies in Madrid inherited part of the art library of the former Centro de Estudios Históricos (CEH) and the entire collection of the Instituto de Historia del Arte y Arqueologia ‘Diego Velazquez’. The Art Section is particularly well endowed with monographs on painting from the 15th to the 18th centuries, and on silver, and with guides and catalogues relating to regional art. The collection of periodicals is one of the best of its kind in Madrid. Other notable holdings include the manuscripts of the Catálogos Monumentales Nacionales, a collection of auction catalogues, and a magnificent collection of photographs. The CEH Library has been part of a libraries automation programme, the Programa de Informatización de Bibliotecas del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (PRIBIC) since 1988, and in 1989 made a start on the retrospective conversion of the catalogue records of the Art Section. The Art Section collaborates with other art libraries in Madrid and contributes data to documentation centres such as ISOC and to the Répertoire d’Art et Archéologie (now succeeded by the Bibliography of the History of Art). Projects currently under consideration include indexing and automating the auction catalogues, and copying the photograph collection onto videodisc.

Using evidence drawn from S. de Ricci and W. J. Wilson’s Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada, American auction records, private library catalogues, public exhibition catalogues, and manuscript fragments surviving in American institutional libraries, this article documents nineteenth-century collections of medieval and Renaissance manuscript fragments in North America before ca. 1900. Surprisingly few fragments can be identified, and most of the private collections have disappeared. The manuscript constituents are found in multiple private libraries, two universities (New York University and Cornell University), and one Learned Society (Massachusetts Historical Society). The fragment collections reflect the collecting genres documented in England in the same period, including albums of discrete fragments, grangerized books, and individual miniatures or “cuttings” (sometimes framed). A distinction is drawn between undecorated text fragments and illuminated ones, explained by aesthetic and scholarly collecting motivations. An interest in text fragments, often from binding waste, can be documented from the 1880s.

Planning for the Turkish National Library (TNL) began in 1946, and the library was opened in 1948. It outgrew its first building, and in 1983 moved to a new one which contained several new facilities. Its main functions are to collect works produced in and relating to Turkey, to record them and produce bibliographies of them, to establish an information network in Turkey, and to perform a leadership role. The collection numbers 1,500,000 items, including non-book materials; the TNL has two thirds of all Turkish books published in the old script. Last year there were 222,000 users. The library's Bibliographical Institute issues monthly the national bibliography and a bibliography of articles in Turkish periodicals, as well as other bibliographies, and constructs union catalogues. Work on automation started in 1987, and the TNL's computer-based information system, with an OPAC (containing records of a third of the library's stock), information networks and various CD-ROMs, was opened to the public in 1993. Future projects include an online union catalogue of foreign language books, digitization of manuscripts and rare books, a conservation laboratory, and an improved automatic conveyor system. Main barriers to progress are the inadequacy of the Free Copy Act and insufficient numbers and quality of staff.

The study of children's marginalia in manuscripts and printed books enables us to reassess traditional assumptions about bibliography, subjectivity, and the literary imagination in the English and American traditions. Commentaries, signatures, and scribbling defacements—together with fictional representations of young people writing in books—illustrate relationships among canonical authority, playful subversion, commodity value, and archival preservation that all contribute to (and may critique) our current fascination with book history as a discipline.

Hebrew incunabula amount to a rather modest, in terms of number, group of around 150 editions that were printed within the period from the late 60s of the 15th century to January 1, 1501 in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Turkey. Despite such a small number of Hebrew incunabula, the role they played in the history of the formation of European printing cannot be overlooked. Even less possible is to overestimate the importance of Hebrew incunabula for understanding Jewish spiritual life as it evolved in Europe during the Renaissance.Russian depositories house 43 editions of Hebrew incunabula, in 113 copies and fragments. The latter are distributed as following: the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences — 67 items stored; the Russian State Library — 38 items; the National Library of Russia — 7 items; the Jewish Religious Community of Saint Petersburg — 1 item. The majority of these books came in public depositories at the late 19th — first half of the 20th century from private collections of St. Petersburg collectors: Moses Friedland (1826—1899), Daniel Chwolson (1819—1911) and David Günzburg (1857—1910). This article looks into the circumstances of how exactly these incunabula were acquired by the depositories. For the first time there are analysed publications of Russian scholars that either include descriptions of Hebrew incunabula (inventories, catalogues, lists) or related to various aspects of Hebrew incunabula studies. The article presents the first annotated bibliography of all domestic publications that are in any way connected with Hebrew incunabula, covering the period from 1893 (the first publication) to the present. In private collections, there was paid special attention to the formation of incunabula collections. It was expressed in the allocation of incunabula as a separate group of books in printed catalogues and the publication of research works on incunabula studies, which belonged to the pen of collectors themselves and haven’t lost their scientific relevance today.

Hebrew incunabula amount to a rather modest, in terms of number, group of around 150 editions that were printed within the period from the late 60s of the 15th century to January 1, 1501 in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Turkey. Despite such a small number of Hebrew incunabula, the role they played in the history of the formation of European printing cannot be overlooked. Even less possible is to overestimate the importance of Hebrew incunabula for understanding Jewish spiritual life as it evolved in Europe during the Renaissance.Russian depositories house 43 editions of Hebrew incunabula, in 113 copies and fragments. The latter are distributed as following: the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences — 67 items stored; the Russian State Library — 38 items; the National Library of Russia — 7 items; the Jewish Religious Community of Saint Petersburg — 1 item. The majority of these books came in public depositories at the late 19th — first half of the 20th century from private collections of St. Petersburg collectors: Moses Friedland (1826—1899), Daniel Chwolson (1819—1911) and David Günzburg (1857—1910). This article looks into the circumstances of how exactly these incunabula were acquired by the depositories. For the first time there are analysed publications of Russian scholars that either include descriptions of Hebrew incunabula (inventories, catalogues, lists) or related to various aspects of Hebrew incunabula studies. The article presents the first annotated bibliography of all domestic publications that are in any way connected with Hebrew incunabula, covering the period from 1893 (the first publication) to the present. In private collections, there was paid special attention to the formation of incunabula collections. It was expressed in the allocation of incunabula as a separate group of books in printed catalogues and the publication of research works on incunabula studies, which belonged to the pen of collectors themselves and haven’t lost their scientific relevance today.

The article sets out to acquaint readers with early works by Truman Capote that have never been published in collections of his early prose. It concerns his school exercises, some of which appeared in The Trinity Times newspaper, as well as short stories penned before 1942 during his time at Greenwich High School. A brief abstract of these works gives an idea of the talent of the writer, who became aware of his vocation very early in life. The article discusses Capote’s other manuscripts discovered in American archives, including a draft ‘Article about a group of young people in Moscow’, referred to by Capote as ‘A Daughter of the Russian Revolution.’ This documentary piece describes the children of the Soviet elite whom Capote met during his visits to Moscow in 1956, 1958 and 1959. Among his other important finds, D. Zakharov mentions the manuscript of the short story Another Day in Paradise, dedicated to the writer Malcolm Lowry (Under the Volcano), whom Capote met in Sicily. The article raises the question of including the aforementioned works in the writer’s general bibliography, offering arguments in favour of their subsequent publication.

OBJECTIVE: To provide an up-to-date review of the current literature on felbamate (FBM) and its use as an antiepileptic medication (AEM). DATA SOURCES: All published literature (manuscripts and abstracts) on FBM was reviewed. The initial bibliography (up to September 1992) was provided by the manufacturer (Carter-Wallace Laboratories); subsequent literature was obtained from American Epilepsy Society presentations in December 1992 and manuscripts published up to January 1993. STUDY SELECTION/DATA EXTRACTION: All pertinent literature was reviewed. Information from the publications was abstracted and organized by the author. DATA SYNTHESIS: FBM is effective in complex partial seizures either as monotherapy or as an adjunct in patients receiving other AEMs. In addition, it has shown efficacy in some seizures associated with the Lennox-Gastaut syndrome. Adverse effects appear to be mild. When FBM is given as monotherapy, the primary adverse effects are insomnia and weight loss. Patients receiving multiple AEMs may have increased adverse effects. CONCLUSIONS: FBM appears to be an effective new AEM. Additional studies as to its role in newly diagnosed and pregnant patients are needed. Pharmacokinetic studies in children, patients with renal failure, and patients on nonepilepsy drugs also are needed.

Although the first issue of Zootaxa appeared in 2001 it was not until two years later, in August 2003, that this aspiring and inspiring new journal issued the first paper on the insect Order Thysanoptera, in Volume 268. Moreover, it was not until February 2005 that the second paper concerning this group appeared in Zootaxa. The subsequent expansion is summarized most succinctly by the number of Thysanoptera papers that appeared in Zootaxa in each of the four five-year periods of these two decades: 5; 40; 92; 134 (see Table 1). The 270 papers concerning this group of insects that appeared in Zootaxa over the 20-year period involved more than 120 authors. These papers were submitted by workers from about 30 different countries, but most of them were from areas of high but previously unexplored species diversity, particularly Australia, Brazil, China, India, Iran, Japan and Malaysia. However, significant contributions were submitted from the far north, including Poland and Russia, as well as the far south, such as Argentina and New Zealand. One reason for the popularity of Zootaxa amongst workers on thrips is presumably the knowledge that this section is edited by two active students of these insects. The editors are pleased to have rejected no more than five papers over these two decades, but they provide much help to authors in shaping manuscripts to ensure that the submitted information is both appropriate, scientifically correct, novel and clearly expressed. Moreover, the journal ensures that manuscripts are published very quickly, usually within four weeks of acceptance by the editors. For the readers a further advantage of Zootaxa is that just over 50% of the published articles on Thysanoptera are freely available on the web, as authors have arranged for Open Access. The thrips publications issued in Zootaxa have included descriptions of 563 new species and 41 new genera of Thysanoptera. These new species represent 9% of the 6300 valid extant species currently listed in this Order, and the new genera represent 5% of the 780 currently recognized genera (ThripsWiki 2021). Many of the publications are only of one or two pages and are issued as Correspondence. Each of these deals with a single new species, or a previously unknown male of a species, or some new and particularly unusual record for a country or host plant. At the opposite extreme are the Monographs that involve revisions of all of the species in a genus, such as the 60 species recognised in the South American genus Holopothrips, or the 30 species known in the worldwide genus Mycterothrips. Others provide illustrated keys to large numbers of genera, such as the 100 genera of Phlaeothripinae that have been recorded from South East Asia. Such extensive studies provide the factual resource on which many of the Articles published in Zootaxa are based. These Articles range from taxonomic revisions of small genera, or of the species found in particular geographic areas, through studies on character state variation and homologies, to historical accounts and catalogues. The very considerable increase in information in recent years about the taxonomic and biological diversity of this group of insects (Mound & Hastenpflug-Vesmanis2021) owes much to the existence of the journal Zootaxa.

This essay deals with the emergence of the study of medieval Armenian artefacts with a particular emphasis on manuscripts and miniature painting and covers the period from the mid-nineteenth century until the beginning of the twentieth century. Unless the suggested title stresses to the heritage of the Armenians, it also alludes to some early approaches, according to which the origins of non-Armenian arts were also sought in medieval Armenia. Amidst the growing waves of contemporary imperialist and nationalist sentiments, the interest in Armenian miniature painting began almost simultaneously in four different intellectual milieus – Russian, German, French, and Armenian – each approaching the subject from its own perspective and motivated by its inner requirements. Additionally, the citations listed here provide a bibliography of Armenian manuscript catalogues published prior to 1900.

Consumer or home use (previously ‘amateur’) moving image formats are distinguished from professional (still known as ‘professional’) ones by relative affordability, ubiquity and simplicity of use. Since Pathé Frères released its Pathé Baby camera, projector and 9.5mm film gauge in 1922, a distinct line of viewing and making equipment has been successfully marketed at nonprofessional use, especially in the home. ‘Amateur film’ is a simple term for a complex, variegated and longstanding set of activities. Conceptually it is bounded only by the negative definition of nonprofessional (usually intended as sub-professional), and the positive definition of being for the love of the activity and motivated by personal passion alone. This defines a field broad enough that two major historians of US amateur film, Patricia R. Zimmermann and Alan D. Kattelle, write about different subjects. Zimmermann focuses chiefly on domestic use and ‘how-to’ literature, while Kattelle unearths the collective practices and institutional structure of the Amateur Ciné Clubs and the Amateur Ciné League (Zimmerman, Reel Families, Professional; Kattelle, Home Movies, Amateur Ciné). Marion Norris Gleason, a test subject in Eastman Kodak’s development of 16mm and advocate of amateur film, defined it as having three parts, the home movie, “the photoplay produced by organised groups”, and the experimental film (Swanson 132). This view was current at least until the 1960s, when domestic documentation, Amateur Ciné clubs and experimental filmmakers shared the same film gauges and space in the same amateur film magazines, but paths have diverged somewhat since then. Domestic documentation remains committed to the moving image technology du jour, the Amateur Ciné movement is much reduced, and experimental film has developed a separate identity, its own institutional structure, and won some legitimacy in the art world. The trajectory of Super 8, a late-coming gauge to amateur film, has been defined precisely by this disintegration. Obsolescence was manufactured far more slowly during the long reign of amateur film gauges, allowing 9.5mm (1922-66), 16mm (1923-), 8mm (1932-), and Super 8 (1965-) to engage in protracted format wars significantly longer than the life spans of their analogue and digital video successors. The range of options available to nonprofessional makers – the quality but relative expense of 16mm, the near 16mm frame size of 9.5mm, the superior stability of 8mm compared to 9.5mm and Super 8, the size of Super 8’s picture relative to 8mm’s – are not surprising in the context of general competition for a diverse popular market on the usual basis of price, quality, and novelty. However, since analogue video’s ascent the amateur film gauges have all comprehensibly lost the battle for the home use market. This was by far the largest section of amateur film and the manufacturers’ overt target segment, so the amateur film gauges’ contemporary survival and significance is as something else. Though all the gauges from 8mm to 16mm remain available today to the curious and enthusiastic, Super 8’s afterlife is distinguished by the peculiar combination of having been a tremendously popular substandard to the substandard (ie, to 16mm, the standardised film gauge directly below 35mm in both price and quality), and now being prized for its technological excellence. When the large scale consumption that had supported Super 8’s manufacture dropped away, it revealed the set of much smaller, apparently non-transferable uses that would determine whether and as what Super 8 survived. Consequently, though Super 8 has been superseded many times over as a home movie format, it is not obsolete today as an art medium, a professional format used in the commercial industry, or as an alternative to digital video and 16mm for low budget independent production. In other words, everything it was never intended to be. I lately witnessed an occasion of the kind of high-fetishism for film-versus-video and analogue-versus-digital that the experimental moving image world is justifiably famed for. Discussion around the screening of Peter Tscherkassky’s films at the Xperimenta ‘09 festival raised the specifics and availability of the technology he relies on, both because of the peculiarity of his production method – found-footage collaging onto black and white 35mm stock via handheld light pen – and the issue of projection. Has digital technology supplied an alternative workflow? Would 35mm stock to work on (and prints to pillage) continue to be available? Is the availability of 35mm projectors in major venues holding up? Although this insider view of 35mm’s waning market share was more a performance of technological cultural politics than an analysis of it, it raised a series of issues central to any such analysis. Each film format is a gestalt item, consisting of four parts (that an individual might own): film stock, camera, projector and editor. Along with the availability of processing services, these items comprise a gauge’s viability (not withstanding the existence of camera-less and unedited workflows, and numerous folk developing methods). All these are needed to conjure the geist of the machine at full strength. More importantly, the discussion highlights what happens when such a technology collides with idiosyncratic and unintended use, which happens only because it is manufactured on a much wider scale than eccentric use alone can support. Although nostalgia often plays a role in the advocacy of obsolete technology, its role here should be carefully qualified and not overstated. If it plays a role in the three main economies that support contemporary Super 8, it need not be the same role. Further, even though it is now chiefly the same specialist shops and technicians that supply and service 9.5mm, 8mm, Super 8, and 16mm, they are not sold on the same scale nor to the same purpose. There has been no reported Renaissances of 9.5mm or 8mm, though, as long term home movie formats, they must loom large in the memories of many, and their particular look evokes pastness as surely as any two-colour process. There are some specifics to the trajectory of Super 8 as a non-amateur format that cannot simply be subsumed to general nostalgia or dead technology fetishism. Super 8 as an Art Medium Super 8 has a longer history as an art medium than as a pro-tool or low budget substandard. One key aspect in the invention and supply of amateur film was that it not be an adequate substitute for the professional technology used to populate the media sphere proper. Thus the price of access to motion picture making through amateur gauges has been a marginalisation of the outcome for format reasons alone (Zimmermann, Professional 24; Reekie 110) Eastman Kodak established their 16mm as the acceptable substandard for many non-theatrical uses of film in the 1920s, Pathé’s earlier 28mm having already had some success in this area (Mebold and Tepperman 137, 148-9). But 16mm was still relatively expensive for the home market, and when Kiyooka Eiichi filmed his drive across the US in 1927, his 16mm camera alone cost more than his car (Ruoff 240, 243). Against this, 9.5mm, 8mm and eventually Super 8 were the increasingly affordable substandards to the substandard, marginalised twice over in the commercial world, but far more popular in the consumer market. The 1960s underground film, and the modern artists’ film that was partly recuperated from it, was overwhelmingly based on 16mm, as the collections of its chief distributors, the New York Film-Makers’ Co-op, Canyon Cinema and the Lux clearly show. In the context of experimental film’s longstanding commitment to 16mm, an artist filmmaker’s choice to work with Super 8 had important resonances. Experimental work on 8mm and Super 8 is not hard to come by, even from the 1960s, but consider the cultural stakes of Jonas Mekas’s description of 8mm films as “beautiful folk art, like song and lyric poetry, that was created by the people” (Mekas 83). The evocation of ‘folk art’ signals a yawning gap between 8mm, whose richness has been produced collectively by a large and anonymous group, and the work produced by individual artists such as those (like Mekas himself) who founded the New American Cinema Group. The resonance for artists of the 1960s and 1970s who worked with 8mm and Super 8 was from their status as the premier vulgar film gauge, compounding-through-repetition their choice to work with film at all. By the time Super 8 was declared ‘dead’ in 1980, numerous works by canonical artists had been made in the format (Stan Brakhage, Derek Jarman, Carolee Schneemann, Anthony McCall), and various practices had evolved around the specific possibilities of this emulsion and that camera. The camcorder not only displaced Super 8 as the simplest to use, most ubiquitous and cheapest moving image format, at the same time it changed the hierarchy of moving image formats because Super 8 was now incontestably better than something. Further, beyond the ubiquity, simplicity and size, camcorder video and Super 8 film had little in common. Camcorder replay took advantage of the ubiquity of television, but to this day video projection remains a relatively expensive business and for some time after 1980 the projectors were rare and of undistinguished quality. Until the more recent emergence of large format television (also relatively expensive), projection was necessary to screen to anything beyond very small audience. So, considering the gestalt aspect of these technologies and their functions, camcorders could replace Super 8 only for the capture of home movies and small-scale domestic replay. Super 8 maintained its position as the cheapest way into filmmaking for at least 20 years after its ‘death’, but lost its position as the premier ‘folk’ moving image format. It remained a key format for experimental film through the 1990s, but with constant competition from evolving analogue and digital video, and improved and more affordable video projection, its market share diminished. Kodak has continued to assert the viability of its film stocks and gauges, but across 2005-06 it deleted its Kodachrome Super 8, 16mm and slide range (Kodak, Kodachrome). This became a newsworthy Super 8 story (see Morgan; NYT; Hodgkinson; Radio 4) because Super 8 was the first deletion announced, this was very close to 8 May 2005, which was Global Super 8 Day, Kodachrome 40 (K40) was Super 8’s most famous and still used stock, and because 2005 was Super 8’s 40th birthday. Kodachome was then the most long-lived colour process still available, but there were only two labs left in the world which could supply processing- Kodak’s Lausanne Kodachrome lab in Switzerland, using the authentic company method, and Dwayne’s Photo in the US, using a tolerable but substandard process (Hodgkinson). Kodak launched a replacement stock simultaneously, and indeed the variety of Super 8 stocks is increasing year to year, partly because of new Kodak releases and partly because other companies split Kodak’s 16mm and 35mm stock for use as Super 8 (Allen; Muldowney; Pro8mm; Dager). Nonetheless, the cancelling of K40 convulsed the artists’ film community, and a spirited defence of its unique and excellent properties was lead by artist and activist Pip Chodorov. Chodorov met with a Kodak executive at the Cannes Film Festival, appealed to the French Government and started an online petition. His campaign circular read: EXPLAIN THE ADVANTAGES OF K40We have to show why we care specifically about Kodachrome and why Ektachrome is not a replacement. Kodachrome […] whose fine grain and warm colors […] are often used as a benchmark of quality for other stocks. The unique qualities of the Kodachrome image should be pointed out, and especially the differences between Kodachrome and Ektachrome […]. What great films were shot in Kodachrome, and why? […] What are the advantages to the K-14 process and the Lausanne laboratory? Is K40 a more stable stock, is it more preservable, do the colors fade resistant? Point out differences in the sensitometry curves, the grain structure... There was a rash of protest screenings, including a special all-day programme at Le Festival des Cinemas Différents de Paris, about which Raphaël Bassan wrote This initiative was justified, Kodak having announced in 2005 that it was going to stop the manufacturing of the ultra-sensitive film Kodachrome 40, which allowed such recognized artists as Gérard Courant, Joseph Morder, Stéphane Marti and a whole new generation of filmmakers to express themselves through this supple and inexpensive format with such a particular texture. (Bassan) The distance Super 8 has travelled culturally since analogue video can be seen in the distance between these statements of excellence and the attributes of Super 8 and 8mm that appealed to earlier artists: The great thing about Super 8 is that you can switch is onto automatic and get beyond all those technicalities” (Jarman)An 8mm camera is the ballpoint of the visual world. Soon […] people will use camera-pens as casually as they jot memos today […] and the narrow gauge can make finished works of art. (Durgnat 30) Far from the traits that defined it as an amateur gauge, Super 8 is now lionised in terms more resembling a chemistry historian’s eulogy to the pigments used in Dark Ages illuminated manuscripts. From bic to laspis lazuli. Indie and Pro Super 8 Historian of the US amateur film Patricia R. Zimmermann has charted the long collision between small gauge film, domesticity and the various ‘how-to’ publications designed to bridge the gap. In this she pays particular attention to the ‘how-to’ publications’ drive to assert the commercial feature film as the only model worthy of emulation (Professional 267; Reel xii). This drive continues today in numerous magazines and books addressing the consumer and pro-sumer levels. Alan D. Kattelle has charted a different history of the US amateur film, concentrating on the cine clubs and their national organisation, the Amateur Cine League (ACL), competitive events and distribution, a somewhat less domestic part of the movement which aimed less at family documentation more toward ‘photo-plays’, travelogues and instructionals. Just as interested in achieving professional results with amateur means, the ACL encouraged excellence and some of their filmmakers received commissions to make more widely seen films (Kattelle, Amateur 242). The ACL’s Ten Best competition still exists as The American International Film and Video Festival (Kattelle, Amateur 242), but its remit has changed from being “a showcase for amateur films” to being open “to all non-commercial films regardless of the status of the film makers” (AMPS). This points to both the relative marginalisation of the mid-century notion of the amateur, and that successful professionals and others working in the penumbra of independent production surrounding the industry proper are now important contributors to the festival. Both these groups are the economically important contemporary users of Super 8, but they use it in different ways. Low budget productions use it as cheap alternative to larger gauges or HD digital video and a better capture format than dv, while professional productions use it as a lo-fi format precisely for its degradation and archaic home movie look (Allen; Polisin). Pro8mm is a key innovator, service provider and advocate of Super 8 as an industry standard tool, and is an important and long serving agent in what should be seen as the normalisation of Super 8 – a process of redressing its pariah status as a cheap substandard to the substandard, while progressively erasing the special qualities of Super 8 that underlay this. The company started as Super8 Sound, innovating a sync-sound system in 1971, prior to the release of Kodak’s magnetic stripe sound Super 8 in 1973. Kodak’s Super 8 sound film was discontinued in 1997, and in 2005 Pro8mm produced the Max8 format by altering camera front ends to shoot onto the unused stripe space, producing a better quality image for widescreen. In between they started cutting professional 35mm stocks for Super 8 cameras and are currently investing in ever more high-quality HD film scanners (Allen; Pro8mm). Simultaneous to this, Kodak has brought out a series of stocks for Super 8, and more have been cut down for Super 8 by third parties, that offer a wider range of light responses or ever finer grain structure, thus progressively removing the limitations and visible artefacts associated with the format (Allen; Muldowney; Perkins; Kodak, Motion). These films stocks are designed to be captured to digital video as a normal part of their processing, and then entered into the contemporary digital work flow, leaving little or no indication of the their origins on a format designed to be the 1960s equivalent of the Box Brownie. However, while Super 8 has been used by financially robust companies to produce full-length programmes, its role at the top end of production is more usually as home movie footage and/or to evoke pastness. When service provider and advocate OnSuper8 interviewed professional cinematographer James Chressanthis, he asserted that “if there is a problem with Super 8 it is that it can look too good!” and spent much of the interview explaining how a particular combination of stocks, low shutter speeds and digital conversion could reproduce the traditional degraded look and avoid “looking like a completely transparent professional medium” (Perkins). In his history of the British amateur movement, Duncan Reekie deals with this distinction between the professional and amateur moving image, defining the professional as having a drive towards clarity [that] eventually produced [what] we could term ‘hyper-lucidity’, a form of cinematography which idealises the perception of the human eye: deep focus, increased colour saturation, digital effects and so on. (108) Against this the amateur as distinguished by a visible cinematic surface, where the screen image does not seem natural or fluent but is composed of photographic grain which in 8mm appears to vibrate and weave. Since the amateur often worked with only one reversal print the final film would also often become scratched and dirty. (108-9) As Super 8’s function has moved away from the home movie, so its look has adjusted to the new role. Kodak’s replacement for K40 was finer grained (Kodak, Kodak), designed for a life as good to high quality digital video rather than a film strip, and so for video replay rather than a small gauge projector. In the economy that supports Super 8’s survival, its cameras and film stock have become part of a different gestalt. Continued use is still justified by appeals to geist, but the geist of film in a general and abstract way, not specific to Super 8 and more closely resembling the industry-centric view of film propounded by decades of ‘how-to’ guides. Activity that originally supported Super 8 continues, and currently has embraced the ubiquitous and extremely substandard cameras embedded in mobile phones and still cameras for home movies and social documentation. As Super 8 has moved to a new cultural position it has shed its most recognisable trait, the visible surface of grain and scratches, and it is that which has become obsolete, discontinued and the focus of nostalgia, along with the sound of a film projector (which you can get to go with films transferred to dvd). So it will be left to artist filmmaker Peter Tscherkassky, talking in 1995 about what Super 8 was to him in the 1980s, to evoke what there is to miss about Super 8 today. Unlike any other format, Super-8 was a microscope, making visible the inner life of images by entering beneath the skin of reality. […] Most remarkable of all was the grain. While 'resolution' is the technical term for the sharpness of a film image, Super-8 was really never too concerned with this. Here, quite a different kind of resolution could be witnessed: the crystal-clear and bright light of a Xenon-projection gave us shapes dissolving into the grain; amorphous bodies and forms surreptitiously transformed into new shapes and disappeared again into a sea of colour. Super-8 was the pointillism, impressionism and the abstract expressionism of cinematography. (Howath) Bibliography Allen, Tom. “‘Making It’ in Super 8.” MovieMaker Magazine 8 Feb. 1994. 1 May 2009 ‹http://www.moviemaker.com/directing/article/making_it_in_super_8_3044/›. AMPS. “About the American Motion Picture Society.” American Motion Picture Society site. 2009. 25 Apr. 2009 ‹http://www.ampsvideo.com›. 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Muldowney, Lisa. “Kodak Ups the Ante with New Motion Picture Film.” MovieMaker Magazine 30 Nov. 2007. 6 Apr. 2009 ‹http://www.moviemaker.com/cinematography/article/kodak_ups_the_ante_with_new_motion_picture_film/›. New York Times. “Super 8 Blues.” 31 May 2005: E1. Perkins, Giles. “A Pro's Approach to Super 8.” OnSuper8 Blogspot 16 July 2007. 13 Apr. 2009 ‹http://onsuper8.blogspot.com/2007/07/pros-approach-to-super-8.html›. Polisin, Douglas. “Pro8mm Asks You to Think Big, Shoot Small.” MovieMaker Magazine 4 Feb. 2009. 1 May 2009 ‹http://www.moviemaker.com/cinematography/article/think_big_shoot_small_rhonda_vigeant_pro8mm_20090127/›. Pro8mm. “Pro8mm Company History.” Super 8 /16mm Cameras, Film, Processing & Scanning (Pro8mm blog) 12 Mar. 2008. 3 May 2009 ‹http://pro8mm-burbank.blogspot.com/2008/03/pro8mm-company-history.html›. Radio 4. No More Yellow Envelopes 24 Dec. 2006. 4 May 2009 ‹http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/pip/m6yx0/›. Reekie, Duncan. 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