My Grandmother The Cinematographer

I stepped deep into my family's past and brought a mysterious cache of Super 8 reels into the digital 21st century.

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Since you’re here, I want to let you know my new album “Split Seconds On Earth” is now available for pre-order on Bandcamp & my website. Thank you for your support and for supporting indie music.

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I am a cinematographer…
And I walked away from everything that's known
And I walked away from everything I lived for
Only to find that everything had grown

- Will Oldham

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The cinematographer takes a selfie

It must’ve been an exercise in careful planning.

Check the batteries. Check the film. Remove the lens cap. Aim, shoot a few seconds here. Pause. Aim, shoot a few seconds there. Check to see how much film is left, then shoot a bit more.

I guess it took practice too, because only after weeks of waiting for developed film would you know if you had a steady hand and the correct lighting to capture a special moment now long passed. It had to take a lot of patience to produce a 3-minute silent home movie in those days.

My grandmother documented many special moments with her Super 8 camera. She captured little snippets of memories, a few random seconds at a time. And from the time when I could walk, run, slide into a plastic pool, or get sprayed by a hose in my grandparents’ backyard, the grinding whir of her Super 8 camera always seemed to be close by. In our family, she played the role of cinematographer in an era when not much of anything was being documented.

When she passed away, a bag of 40 or more Regular 8 and Super 8 reels landed in my possession. There were so many little boxes the unexpected inheritance left me feeling overwhelmed at first. I started randomly pulling reel boxes out of the bag to examine them, wondering about their history. Boxes marked “Pierrefonds”, “Newfoundland 1967” and simply “Not Good” were written in pen, presumably as part of my grandmother’s documentation process and filing system. I thought about how she had handled and meticulously cared for each film reel, so long ago.

I went through the bag reading her handwritten notes and inspecting the dates on the postmarks. The earliest reel was from the mid-1960s. This was the time when my grandmother was most prolific with her cinematographer work. The postmarks were there because you’d drop off the footage for development and the developer would send you the precious results by Canada Post. The post office provided the delicate delivery service for these films and now, 50 years later, also provided me with timestamps for each one. My grandparents’ home address was on the boxes too, so yeah, I looked up their 1960s Montréal home on Google Maps, amazed to see it still there.

I was overcome by a serene sense of duty. I assessed the amount of work it would take to digitize, assemble and preserve my grandmother’s cherished films. I felt responsible to pick up her life’s work and carry on, resurrecting these moments for family, and for relatives of the cinematographer’s actors from the past.

After much deliberation and research, I bought a Super 8 reel scanner and got to work, making a valiant attempt to save the home movies and pull them into the 21st century. I learned a three minute reel would take over 30 minutes to scan, then the scanner machine would assemble each frame into a silent digital movie, ready for downloading and sharing.

I randomly picked a reel box from the bag and loaded up the film as per the scanning instructions. I then sat back to let the new machine take over and work its magic on the first old reel. As it ‘click, click, clicked’ I peaked at the tiny screen on the scanner to watch a young version of my grandfather come to life, one frame at a time. In most of these little movies, I would discover my grandfather was the star of the show, clearly the cinematographer’s favourite subject.

Who else would I see? My excitement built as I carefully set up each film for its long journey through the scanner. What visual treasure would I find this time? I felt a sense of awe and anticipation wash over me as I loaded up each reel.

After each film was captured, I watched the newly minted digital home movie play beautifully on my computer screen. People were brought to life, many of whom long gone from this earth. The changing scenery, lighting, and facial expressions, created a magical and eerie experience, like old photographs coming to life. I marvelled at what I was seeing. Somehow I was looking through a silent window into the past. Sometimes I felt nervous to look. Sometimes I felt lucky. Almost always I was overwhelmed with emotion.

Soon I found footage of the mid-60s house I had looked up on Google Maps, as I watched my uncles and parents emerge from the front door. They looked so young. It was my grandparents’ 25th wedding anniversary, so everyone was decked out and parading with shy smiles for the camera. I did the math and estimated this one to be around 1967. The postmark on the little box didn’t lie.

“Christmas ‘79” was up next as I threaded the film through the scanner and watched the frames come to life. I imagined my grandmother behind the camera filming at Christmastime as she let me ham it up in my late 70s satin threads and spill my exuberance for her film.

In other reels, my sister’s beloved cat is there. My Dad’s first horse. My first dog. My grandfather’s beloved brother who I’d never met. Their entire family in Newfoundland are in some movies, waving and smiling for my grandmother, everyone dressed in their Sunday best on a dirt road by the sea. Her family came to life too, only they were across the ocean walking on English pavement. As I watched through the silent window to the past, I’m reminded these people are no longer with us and I’ll never meet them. But I know for sure there was joy in those moments. I can see it in the smiles.

There are Expo 67 clips where my Mom and my uncle look like teenaged movie stars, strutting for the paparazzi amongst the hordes of Montréal tourists, queuing up for glimpses at endless pavilions.

In another clip, I’m fetching a stubbie beer bottle from the fridge for my Dad. This regular right of passage I experienced as a kid was just a story I’d tell my friends, but thanks to the cinematographer, I now have the evidence. And I can text it from the super computer in my pocket to dozens of friends around the world instantly and wish them a Happy Friday from the smiling kid with the beer. Not something the cinematographer would have dreamed possible as she filmed me back then.

As the weeks went by and I made it through the bag of Super 8 treasures, it came time to scan the very last reel. As I did with all the others, I studied the box and inspected the postmark. This box was simply marked “Lowestoft”.

What is Lowestoft I wondered, staring at my grandmother’s handwriting in blue ink. When I looked up the name, I discovered it was the most easterly settlement in the UK, a coastal town with beachfront. Curious.

As with so many of the other reels, once scanned and assembled into a digital movie, my grandparents appeared, silently before me. This time they were young and alone together, frolicking on the beach.

My grandfather goes into the ocean first, smiling and splashing as the cinematographer captures the moment.

Then it’s her turn.

“It’s cold,” my grandmother says as I read her lips on the silent film when she dips her feet into the North Sea.

“It’s coooooold”. She says again for effect, grimacing yet smiling to my grandfather who is taking a rare turn behind the camera. At this moment I also realize it’s one of the very few times out of 40 reels that my grandmother the cinematographer is caught on film.

She then quickly exists the water and walks to a beach chair to sit down. She playfully brushes her feet through what I imagine is cold English sand.

They are so happy together, I think to myself, looking through this silent window into the past, and I’m overwhelmed with emotion.

She smiles again at my grandfather from the beach chair as he captures a few more precious split seconds.

Then the reel goes black.

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My grandmother the cinematographer takes a quick selfie in a British hotel room in the late 60s.