RESOURCES FOR ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL MEDIA:
Personal Essay Filmmaking of the 1990s
A Web Resource for Researchers, Teachers, Users and Filmmakers

By Patricia Aufderheide
Director, Center for Social Media
American University

Barbara Abrash
Managing Director
Center for Media, Culture and History
New York University

Introduction
This site offers a set of tools to understand a film genre that burgeoned in the 1990s: personal essay filmmaking. Composed by two scholars of independent media, it also has research contributions from Velina Petrova and Robert Connelly. Kelly Keene, Carey Murphy, Raenell Nagel, Lisa Stefanoff, and Dana Waddell helped prepare the manuscript and site. It is maintained by the staff of American University's School of Communication. For any comments, corrections or additions, please write Center for Social Media (socialmedia@american.edu).

In the 1990s, personal essay films and videos—"Silverlake Life" (Friedman, 1993), "Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter" (Hoffman, 1994), "A Healthy Baby Girl" (Helfand, 1996) and "Family Name" (Alston, 1997) were only a few—became a genre. This genre emerged out of a broad and diverse set of social movements in the 1960s and 1970s, which pressed for an expansion of civil rights. They also addressed, through the reconstruction of memory, the need to establish a social location in a networked, information society.

This site offers the following resources for the study of this fascinating genre:

• A short overview of the genre
• Published resources for further research
• Profiles of individual personal essay films and videos
• A teacher's guide to use of personal essay films in the classroom
• A database of personal essay films of the 1990s
• Web links to distributors, programmers and other related sites

If you would like to comment on, correct or add to information on this site, please write socialmedia@american.edu.

Thank you!

© 2002 Pat Aufderheide and Barbara Abrash

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