Ron: Amateur.
The basis of amateur is love.
People shoot today,
and then what they love, basically.
So they shoot their pets, their food, their friends, their family.
For me, home movies really were a revelation.
Because I've spent a lot of time working on classic, narrative films, and documentary films
and artist cinema.
And really, discovering a body of work that everyone knows exists, has known it exists
for many years,
the largest body of moving image work created in the 20th century is home movies.
Brittany: There was a Jonas Mekas essay where he's like, you know, call to arms, call to action
about appreciating home movies,
and he calls it the folk poetry of the people.
Ashley: Yeah, I think that was...I wanna say '62.
Early '60s.
I mean, we came to think of it as the people's cinema.
There's Hollywood cinema, and there is artist cinema, and there is the people's cinema.
And why have we kind of ignored home movies?
Katie: Jonas is really a "small gauge sage."
Like, he predicted that this is what we're doing right now.
Brittany: Totally.
I think it kinda says that in the essay, too.
Like, you can't see it now, but just wait.
I mean, this will be so beloved.
Ron: There were different levels of artfulness, that was one, you know cause there are artists,
people have been responding to home movies and artists have used home movies for a long time
and then there are, well I call them artful amateurs,
people who obviously had a talent, people who went on to film making careers
who made home movies
and they are shot with a certain and you can tell this person has talent, the way things
are framed,
and then there are, I call the hardcore home movies,
dad and mom buys a camera and they just shoot the family,
either they're following the guidebook and they're not following the guidebook.
We came to believe that there should be a home movie aesthetic.
It should be kinda bottom up rather than top down
we're not looking from Hollywood down,
the films are looking up from these films
as if whatever the home movie maker did, this was the way movies should be made.
Brittany: And that's where home movies start to sort of unintentionally intersect with avant garde films
Like what we’re looking at right now is completely over exposed,
it looks like they’re in a snowstorm or something which like
you can easily imagine that affect being employed by an avant garde filmmaker.
Ron: Post-production for a home movie is neglect.
They show it a couple times and then it gets neglected and typically orphaned.
And the Jared film is one of our very favorite films,
but there was a lot of deterioration on those.
Mold, actually.
Were covered with mold.
The mold does wonderful things to film, actually.
Ashley: Very Bill Morrison.
Ron: Yeah.
Katie: It literally eats away at the emulsion.
That's what it does.
So, it creates this...
Brittany: Kinda kaleidoscopic...
Katie: ...cool...yeah.
Brittany: ...psychedelic effect.
Ron: And is this Kodachrome?
The color is really good.
Katie: It looks like it has to be.
Brittany: Oh, it's really...
Katie: Because the color is so good and hasn't faded.
Ron: That's the thing.
That home movies can look really beautiful, the color.
The quality of the...
You should talk about that.
Katie: Well, the Kodachrome was a really special...
...invention by Kodak,
and sadly is no longer with us.
Brittany: We all know what Kodachrome looks like.
It's become such, like, an embedded part of, like,
our collective past.
Katie: Yes.
Brittany: It’s kind of what the past looks like to us.
Ron: Yeah
Brittany: Or the idea of the past.
People who didn't even really experience.
You know, I wasn't alive then, but when I kind of think of this time, it's how I think
of the colors, those bright reds and...
Katie: Yeah, blues.
Ron: And that's the aesthetic we were talking about, that's the connection to modernism,
modern culture at a certain time is the color, the fact that the color is of a certain period,
the way it might be in a painting.
Kodak commercial excerpt: Man - “Let me show you something,
here's a reel of Kodak home movies,
now suppose these were your movies, and on this reel you had movies of, oh lets say this young lady learning to walk,
suppose you had all that and more, in action and in color,
that would be worth a fortune, wouldn't it?”
Woman -“Oh yes”
Ron: Home movie culture doesn't start till the mid-'20s, when the equipment manufacturers
began selling equipment, specifically to a home and non professional market.
That's the reason we did a lot of research on the advertising,
and you would find in the 20s they were sold in higher class magazines cause they were
trying to sell to a wealthier clientele,
they would picture people shooting their home movies on estates essentially.
There's a whole ad campaign in the 40s where there are Hollywood stars and directors using
home movie cameras.
Katie: Oh, I see.
Oh, to try to sell it.
Ron: Yeah..
Katie: Celebrity endorsements.
Ron: Leo McCarey appears.
Gary Cooper is in a campaign.
Doris Day is in a campaign.
Brittany: I think it's easy to get really sentimental about home movies, and for good
reason.
You feel like passage of time, death of memory, all these really profound things, but the
other thing that kinda starts to come up is really
capturing kind of, like, sadness and darkness of really, like,
the 20th century, and this body of work, in particular, the American 20th century.
You see really heteronormative, rigid gender roles.
You see segregation.
You see, pollution, and litter, and all of these things.
Ashley: Horrible zoos.
Brittany: ..zoos, there's tons of animal abuse.
Brittany: Sexual harassment.
It all comes through, which is not something you would necessarily think when you're looking
at a home movie,
but you watch enough of them and kind of put them together,
and read between the lines, and kind of look into the background a little bit,
and it's all there.
Brittany: I always say home movies are like time machines, kind of.
It's like letting you interact with your parents as adults.
Ron: We began to see that in other people's home movies.
When you see it on your own, you see it in other families' home movies.
Katie: Sure.
I mean, just, like, with all the different home movie days, one of the things that's
so
amazing is when people haven't seen this reel ever, and they get so emotional because
they've never seen their grandmother moving around as a living person,
or their grandfather, or somebody that was only existed as a still for them.
it's just...
Ron: This is the scene I was talking about, yeah.
Katie: It's overwhelmingly emotional.
Woman: Oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god!
Man: That's your mom’s parents
Woman: and those are my great grandparents
Boy: What's that?
Projectionist: This is a film transfer machine, and we’re transferring films to files so
we can watch them on computers and share them with people.
Brittany: This is your family, Ron?
Ron: Yeah, that's...
Brittany: Is that your mother?
Ron: Yeah, that's my mother.
That's my brother,
my mother died young, not long after these films were made actually, about five years later
so my younger brother never really knew her, he only knew her, he only understood their
relationship from these films.
Katie: That's great, is that him?
Ron: No, that’s me.
Ashley: Yeah, that is my dad
Brittany: Papa!
Ashley: And both of my grandparents died when my dad was a teenager, so even before he and
my mother met,
so this is all I know of my grandparents.
We had hundreds and hundreds of reels.
Katie: Oh god
Ashley: It’s a significant reason why I became a film archivist.
Katie: There's still a lot of home movies to be discovered, I think.
Ron: Yeah.
Katie: Because there's still...
When you think of the generation, they're still in the attics, and the basements, and stuff
Brittany: Does that haunt you?
Katie: A little bit.
It makes me a little bit sad, but it's exciting at the same time that somebody...
But you just wanna get the word out that, like, don't throw them away,
because one of the main reasons we started home movie day was we found out people were
throwing away their film,
and we wanted to teach them that you shouldn't do that.
Ron: I would be happy to dedicate the rest of my career as a moving image archivist to
working on this body of film,
and there are enough people working on the other the kinds of film, this is a body of
film that needs to be actually recovered
and preserved so if you're watching this,
go to your closet, go to your basement, go to the attic and see what you can find.
Ashley: And also, back up your phone.
Katie: And don't throw them away once you get them transferred.
Ron: And back up your phone, right.
Brittany: And then back that up.
Ron: Yeah.
Brittany: And then send it to a friend.
Katie: All right is that good?
You're gonna eat all that film!
Ashley: Act natural!
Brittany: Alright everybody like wiggle your fingers or something with motion