Mad Roads.

Lead us to and take us away.
Guides to our memories.
Detours in our minds.
Journeys.
Sharp turns.
Endless.
Mad roads… Driving.

–David Howell

We’re always excited when filmmakers and videobloggers incorporate home movie footage found here at Lost in Light into their work. This week we’re especially pleased to feature this gritty and stirring work by David Howell, in collaboration with Jack Kerouac.

Click the “REMIX ME” category on the right for a list of video posts available for reuse and remix.

America, reduced to the serenity of a local girl singing the national anthem, the throttling of beaten engines, and the collective anticipation the moment before impact. The demolition derby is a beautiful symphony ending in a mist of radiator steam, smoke, and heavy night air that gently guides you from fairground field parking back home again. All of this so perfectly captured though sight in sound in Mr. Sherman’s little super 8 film.
– Aaron Valdez

Richie Sherman is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Film, Video and Media Studies at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, PA. He has an extensive background in various forms of filmmaking. He has recently received rave reviews for cinematography on the indie feature The Guatemalan Handshake. Demolition 7 is available on DVD through The Journal of Short Film (#2).

The protection of children is a priority. Even a small child on a bike should wear a helmet. And a newborn baby on a plane must be strapped to its mother. A child on roller-skates should wear kneepads. And elbow pads. A child on roller skates should wear knee and elbow pads as well as a helmet. Buy one f those plastic things to stop young children opening the drawer in the kitchen: there are knives in it. Don’t give children small mechanical toys: they can swallow the moving parts. It’s tempting, but just don’t do it (…) Your house is a potential war zone for a child.
–Jean-Philippe Convert

Jean-Philippe Convert (1972) was born in France and he studied philosophy in Toulouse. After a number of years in education he applied himself to the writing of fictional stories and the making of video films. Important subjects in his work are the dangers and the consequences of chasing behind a global utopia and the degree to which our image of reality is shaped by the media or reporting by regimes. Convert lives and works in Brussels.

The film was made for one of the Austin Cinemaker Co-op’s (now Austin School of Film) quarterly Super 8 film festivals. Super 8 film fests are alive and well around the globe, including the fantastic international Flicker network. OnSuper8.org also has a great list of worldwide small gauge screening and filmmaking opportunities.

We’re always looking for creative work to showcase, so if you have a small format film (new or aged) that you’d like us to consider for this site, drop us a line. You can send us a permalink, provide it on video, or we can always transfer the film to video for you. For more details, check out our Call for Work page.

A memorial site is being set up at helenhill.org. Photos and memories can be sent to memory(at)helenhill(dot)org.

By all accounts, Helen was both an incredibly sweet and generous person as well as a dedicated filmmaker, animator and film preservationist. When much of her amazing collection of home movies was severely damaged by Hurricane Katrina, she took on the task of carefully rescuing the works–and in many cases simply making the best of the damaged films she could salvage (hear her discuss them here). Her enthusiasm for handmade, DIY films, and willingness to share her expertise and passion, was an inspiration to many, including myself. She will be missed terribly.

I never met Helen in person, but we corresponded by email and she graciously included a little write-up of mine in her fantastic and much-loved DIY filmmaking guide, Recipes for Disaster. Much of what I learned about hand-painting film for that article came from working on the film I’m including here.

This Super 8 film is one of my first experiments in hand-painting, created in 1998 in Austin, Texas, and it was largely due to the amazing collection of knowledge included in Recipes that I was able to continue experimenting in this form. Even though we never met, I owe a lot to Helen, and I don’t think my films would be what they are today without her influence. This film is dedicated to her memory.

We at Lost in Light send our best wishes and deepest condolences to her family and friends. We are tremendously upset by this news, and she will be in our thoughts.

NB: Forgive the quality of this transfer; this film was not transferred using our Lost in Light transfer system, but is rather a shoot-off-the-wall style transfer from several years ago.