We're bringing into focus a wide range of women amateur filmmakers whose creative work has been overlooked and unacknowledged in the archives.
Working closely with two partner archives, the East Anglian Film Archive (EAFA) and the Irish Film Archive (IFA), we have conducted new research into existing collections of largely unknown women amateur filmmakers.
Our work
By identifying significant gaps in knowledge at the level of cataloguing, accession records, historical research, and metadata – and by adopting feminist methodologies that allow us to challenge existing practices – we have developed a toolkit that will allow any archive with a moving image collection to create more effective, useful and accessible records about women filmmakers.
The Filmmakers
As part of this work, we have produced a set of biographies that highlight some of these amazing creative women. As a small step to making such women’s filmmaking more broadly available, below you will find small selection of women amateur filmmakers from across the UK and Ireland collections.
Laura ‘Laurie’ Abbott Bruce Day (née Jones) (1897-1982) worked in partnership with her husband Stuart Day (1892–1973) as an impressive and prolific amateur filmmaking team who won numerous awards for their films. The couple were founders in 1934 of the Stoke-on-Trent Cine Society and remained committed members for the remainder of their lives. They were also highly active in the Institute of Amateur Cinematographers, being awarded Fellowships, and regular attendees of the annual London Amateur Film Festival. Their filmmaking was very much part of their civic role, using film screenings and other cine-club events to raise money for charity, especially those that benefitted their local community in Stoke.
Laurie Day was born in Christchurch, New Zealand and emigrated with her family to the UK at the age of ten. Upon her marriage in 1924 to Stuart Day, a timber merchant and veteran of the Gallipoli Campaign, she settled in Trentham, Staffordshire. Although some accounts refer to a pre-existing interest in drama and possibly even studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, it seems that Laurie Day’s interest in filmmaking began in earnest in 1930, she later recounted, ‘when my father thrust an Ensign Kinecam (which we still use) into my hands just before the family set off for Oberammergau to see the Passion Play’, and she then ‘hogged that Ensign so selfishly that my husband had to buy a camera for himself’ (Day, 1954, 823). This not only provides an early indication of how important travel would be as an instigating force and inspiration in the Days’ amateur films, but also that Laurie was an active filmmaker and initially at least the primary camera operator in their partnership; too often in amateur film culture, it would be assumed that the wife was only her husband’s helper. She even talked humorously of her attempts to rectify her husband’s cinematographic failings: ‘And one important thing I have learned: always to close down a stop on my husband’s estimate of the exposure for a distant view in sunshine. When you come to think of it, this discovery and the silent rebellion against male supremacy in technique which has followed from it, might be said to be no small things in any woman’s cine odyssey.’ (Day, 1954, 825)
Laurie Day’s ‘cine odyssey’, alongside her husband Stuart, took in travelogues with a twist (courtesy of their often witty framing narratives), among them The Countess Receives (1935), Day Dreams (1936), Escape (1947), A Penny for Your Thoughts (1950), City of Temples (1953), Dance Little Lady (1954), Three Rovers (1955), Passport to Paradise (1957) – made by Stoke Cine Society colleague Gerald Mee, Thanks for the Memory (1963) and Out of the Blue (1967). These films showcased amazing sights and beautiful locations across the world, from the Channel Islands to Capri, Switzerland to Sri Lanka, Bali to Bermuda. Although the Days were most prolific in the travel film, they made forays into other genres, most notably with their comedy of domestic discord Further Outlook Unsettled (1938) and their elegiac compilation film 1938, The Last Year of Peace (1948). Many of their films received commendations and some won major awards in national amateur film competitions for their lively and inventive approach to filmmaking, and that success was significantly indebted to Laurie Day’s ‘fertile imagination’ and ‘evergreen enthusiasm’ (anon, 1982).
Selected Filmography
The Countess Receives (1935) https://eafa.org.uk/work/?id=1020405
Day Dreams (1936) https://eafa.org.uk/work/?id=1020377
Further Outlook Unsettled (1938) https://eafa.org.uk/work/?id=1020401
1938, The Last Year of Peace (1948) https://eafa.org.uk/work/?id=1018840
A Penny for Your Thoughts (1950) https://eafa.org.uk/work/?id=1025374
City of Temples (1953) https://eafa.org.uk/work/?id=1025544
Passport to Paradise (1957) https://eafa.org.uk/work/?id=1026047
Bibliography
Anon., ‘Obituary: Laurie Day’, Movie Maker, June 1982, p. 339.
Laurie Day, ‘We Thought We Knew the Secret’, Amateur Cine World , December 1954, pp.823-5.
Laurie Day, 'Our First Movie', Amateur Movie Maker, May 1958, pp. 248-49.
Francis Dyson, TNA project: cataloguing of the Institute of Amateur Cinematographers women film-makers’ films, July 2015, pp. 1-2. http://www.eafa.org.uk/documents/TNA-Project_Women-Filmmakers_Research-Guide_pm-31-7.pdf
Profile image taken from Further Outlook Unsettled (1938). Courtesy of East Anglian Film Archive.
Our partners
This work comes from a joint UK-Ireland collaboration between the University of East Anglia, Maynooth University, and the University of Sussex; funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Irish Research Council (IRC), as part of the UK-Ireland Digital Humanities scheme.
