Other people’s home movies unreel far from boring footage
They are often grainy and jittery, sometimes lingering too long on the rear of a parade float or a patch of daffodils, but many old home movies contain buried treasure.
Some were filmed by amateurs who had a photographer’s eye, a sense of place in time and an understanding that what seems mundane is really the quiet spectacle of life.
Home Movie Day was established as an international event in 2003 by the Center for Home Movies — a group of archivists, home movie buffs and film historians — to encourage people to dig out, dust off and save their family films. They realized a lot of strong cultural material was quietly being lost to landfills, mildewy basements and hot closets.
The Carnegie Library’s main branch in Oakland held this year’s local Home Movie Day one recent Saturday afternoon. It was one of hundreds throughout the world.
A handful of people arrived with their footage, and volunteers set to work reviewing and splicing. Afterward, everyone sat down to watch.
Greg Pierce, associate curator of film and video at The Warhol Museum, ran the projector.
“Usually, it’s [footage] of birthdays, Christmas, events like that,” said Mr. Pierce, a collector of orphan home movies, “but sometimes there’s the unusual, like a family that took their camera to the hospital” to visit a patient.
Carol Peiffer of Butler County arrived with several reels, one marked “wedding.”
“But I don’t know whose
wedding,” she said before the lights were dimmed. “My mother died in 2009, and now we’re getting ready to sell her house,” where the family’s films were stored.
Many baby boomers remember the ubiquitous sight of dads wielding movie cameras in the mid-’60s, when Super 8 film came out and made the hobby more affordable.
One such dad was John D’Ascenzo, a retail executive whose daughter Joan McDonald showed up with reels of her family’s life — at parties, playing cards and water skiing. Her father filmed his Italian-born in-laws pinching cheeks and his daughters in their new flannel nightgowns at Christmas.
In the opening scene of one of these films, “Christmas 1969,” Irma D’Ascenzo watches her granddaughter Gina open a Christmas present. The girls proceed to unwrap nightgowns — Cissy with the yellow one, Joan with the blue. The girls’ mother, Jeanne, sits smiling, her arm cocked. Mr. D’Ascenzo is shown making a toast later in the film, and his sister, Rosemary D’Ascenzo, is also shown.
Mr. D’Ascenzo was an executive vice president of Winkelman’s, a women’s store located in Detroit; Jeanne owned Upstairs at Walnut Street in Shadyside, a specialty store in the 1980s. Irma D’Ascenzo was the first woman to serve on Pittsburgh City Council, from 1956 to 1970. Rosemary D’Ascenzo was a superintendent for the Pittsburgh Public Schools and sat on Pittsburgh’s City Planning Commission.
Mr. D’Ascenzo also shot film on international trips with Jeanne.
In 1969, on a Florence, Italy, street corner with the Duomo in the background, there’s Jeanne standing dutifully in a smart dress, channeling Jackie Onassis. The next reel shows three dark-haired girls back home.
“That’s my sister,” Ms. McDonald said as one girl appeared, then another, “and that’s me.”
And there’s Dad, being filmed instead of filming. He wears a pair of early ’70s sideburns.
“I might have seen these one time in my life,” said Ms. McDonald, who grew up in Highland Park and in Michigan and now lives in Mt. Lebanon. “What struck me watching them now is how close we were as a family, my grandparents and all my cousins. I was so happy to see everyone again.”
But she also felt a connection to films that Diana Ames of Friendship brought and had never seen. They were of her husband’s family from Zelienople. After viewing them, she said she plans to get them digitized.
Several reels show a patriotic parade of Zelie’s 1940 centennial. People drive antique vehicles and wear reenactment clothing. Girl Scouts march in rows, then Boy Scouts; a bugle and drum corps; bicycles fluttering red, white and blue streamers; a teenage boy twirling a baton; sheep and goats; dogs in sunglasses and tutus; a kid with a lizard.
“I loved that parade,” Ms. McDonald said. “It was just the coolest thing. You feel like you kind of know the people.”
The thought of having to sit through other people’s home movies may seem the epitome of boring but, in fact, the Home Movie Day experience was enchanting.
Ms. Ames said, at one point, “Oh my goodness! I wish I knew who everyone is,” and she was beaming. She and the rest of the audience absorbed scenes from a little world in 1939: a spaniel pulling a baby in a sled through the snow, a little girl dancing on pointe on a porch, a stately older woman walking on a sidewalk toward the camera.
“That might be one of Martha’s sisters,” Ms. Ames said. “Martha was one of eight children. She was the postmaster in Harmony for many years.”
Suddenly, a gaggle of skinny little boys with slicked-back hair pile out a door into the yard. Then chickens are pecking at the ground. A girl and a woman walk arm in arm through flowers, the wind whipping their skirts. Elderly matrons line up on the porch, all in black, prim necklines, and then two women wander toward an arbor. One says something and the other throws her head back, laughing.
Dwight Swanson, a longtime film historian and board member of the Home Movie Center, in Madison, Wis., said the silence is part of what makes home movies enigmatic.
“There is more information with sound, but it can be disappointing,” he said. The silence allows the viewer to imagine. “It makes you pay attention.”
Next up: Carol Peiffer’s mystery wedding.
As the film rolled, she said, “I think that’s Aunt Jeanne’s wedding in Mount Troy. I think 1947.”
The film shows people gathering, moving toward the church. “That’s my mother,” going in the door, followed by “my cousin Skip. There’s my sister, the flower girl.” A girl in blue walks into the scene and everybody says “Ahhh.”
“That’s my mom and sister,” Ms. Pfeiffer said as the screen fills with a woman and small girl. A man appears. “That’s my dad.” He puts a hand to the woman’s cheek and kisses her. “I hope that’s my dad.”
Everyone laughed at a family joke that belongs to everyone.
“That’s the most common response to watching other people’s home movies,” Mr. Swanson said. “The more we watch the more we feel connections to the people in the films. We may be separated by geography or time but there is basic humanity that nearly everybody can connect to.”