The Passion and Experimentation of Amateur Filmmaking: Focusing on James Henry Morris’s <Archives Korea, 1930-1940>

This paper analyzes the early cinematic implications of the < Archives Korea, 1930-1940 >, a collection of filmic footage captured by Canadian entrepreneur James Henry Morris (1871-1942) who resided in Korea. No doubt the archival value of Morris’s collection stems from the visual indexicality that only film technology, as a reproductive technology, can capture. Indeed, Morris faithfully documented many aspects of colonial Korea from the perspective of an immigrant rather than a traveler. However, rather than asking what these films documented, this paper focuses on how the transnational film technologies were received and executed in Korea as a vernacular form in order to imagine an interesting intersection of global and Korean film history through the transnational mediating actor named Morris.For this purpose, this paper argues that Morris was an amateur filmmaker who was keen and receptive to the development of new film technologies. The Morris collection is an example of the vernacular practice of amateur filmmaking, an important practice in early cinema history that bears ideological and formal similarities to amateur films made in North America in the 1920s and 30s. Interestingly, Morris’s visual records bear the marks of relentless practice and experimentation in the pursuit of professional proficiency. The Morris collection is a fascinating text that shows a migrant colonizer’s amateur passion for filmmaking and aspirations for professionalism in the context of the development of film technology and its social and local reception.