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Jen put out a call on our local Freecycle list and we got our first batch of homegrown film from a gentleman in Coralville, Iowa. I edited down the first twenty minutes of his home movies into this short video and another video we will post in a few days. I chopped up quick segments here and there and left in the abstract “mistakes.” Sometimes the mistakes are the most beautiful things about home movies. I love how the focus slowly softens as the camera zooms and the sunlight bouncing around the lens element. The scratches flying by make me think of all the times the family sat down and watched these same moments over and over again.

This reel has some great stuff. Kids popping wheelies on banana-seat bikes, dad smoking his pipe, a girl preparing for the big dance, the new, fully-automatic luxury automobile, electric racetracks, guys operating an auger, funny faces, and even a sci-fi film (coming later this week).

Remember, if you’d like to see the original footage used in our posts, click on other video formats. Clicking on the MPEG-2 link will take you to our corresponding Internet Archive page.