Make Your Own Motion Pictures: The Birth Of 16mm Film

Part of CINECITY 2024

2024 marks the 100th anniversary of the launch of 16mm by Kodak in the UK. It was a new film gauge with its own camera and projector and was designed to be an accessible, portable and affordable alternative to the film industry’s standard of 35mm. As a result, the 1920s and 1930s saw the slow rise of a new generation of film-makers who used 16mm to make non-theatrical silent films that could be personal, community-orientated, non-commercial, political, artistic and experimental.16mm enabled the birth of ‘personal films’ - a tendency that continues to this day with films made on mobile phones.

For this event, Jane King of Screen Archive South East, the region’s film archive, has curated a special programme of early 16mm films from the archive’s collection. It is introduced by the film historian, Frank Gray.