Sadly, this is the final post here on Lost in Light. We extend great thanks to all of our contributors and supporters as we draw this project to a close. The site will remain live and searchable as an archive of all the great home movies and creative projects that have been offered here.

With this last film, we present another gem from the great collector of film ephemera, Nolan Pelletier. He includes with this film some amazing slides collected from the same estate sale that offered up this eclectic home movie:

This film came from the Estate of this man. He was definitely a hunter. Half the slides I found were of his latest blood covered hunting kills or his hunting buddies. Mixed in with the rest of the slides was this picture. One of these things is not like the other.

I highly recommend browsing Nolan’s Flickr stream, the owls go, which includes wonderful still images as well as selections of the hours of home movies we transferred from his collection, which make fantastic use of Flickr’s video feature.

Nolan Pelletier of Connecticut, USA, has one of my favorite streams on Flickr, the owls go. It’s a collection of found photos and slides picked up at estate and garage sales – odd, poignant, charming, and adorable images of strangers from eras past.

Here, Nolan offers a few home movies his picked up in his collecting travels. Because they’re found films, details can often be hard to come by, but Nolan offers a description of this particular gem:

This film is from the estate of a family who lived only 2 or 3 minutes from my house. It’s very odd to see the neighborhood they lived in 50 years ago. From what I can gather, this film was taken by the mother. She worked for the American School for the Deaf, and these were taken there. There are several reels of footage of all the children gathered for different occasions. They were all taken in the mid to late 1960s. I would love to know where these kids are today. They’re all pretty adorable.

The American School for the Deaf was founded in 1817 and is based in West Hartford, Connecticut. Students there also made this quite interesting website, Deaf is….

This post is among the last new entries Lost in Light will be making, as we prepare to retire the project. It’s been a wonderful year and a half, but our lives beckon us toward other projects. The site will remain up and complete as an archive of all these wonderful films we have collected. thanks to everyone who has participated in this labor of love.

This week, some great shots of huge turtles, a snoozing alligator, Mt. Rushmore, and vistas of the Grand Canyon. All from our contributor Ashima, who adds this:

My mama had a hard time remembering the year, but she thinks it is 1977. I do clearly remembering waking up that alligator in my little brown suit. I didn’t want to get mud on it! We took this trip from Chicago to California and these were some stops along the way. I think the trading post at the end of the video is the Hubbell Trading Post, a national historic site. Honestly, I have no idea where the turtle and alligator were located. I asked my mama and she cannot remember either. BUT, doesn’t that guy look like Steve Irwin only skinnier? I doubt it was him…

The Hubbell Trading Post is the oldest operating trading post in the Navajo Nation of the U.S., located in Northeastern Arizona.

For high-resolution footage of this film and more, click the “MPEG-2″ link above to access the Internet Archive.

I love the way this film is shot – meandering, exploring, unafraid. This film offers attention to the interesting details of these scenes: kelp rolling on the surface of the water, kites and seagulls overhead, playful interactions with friends. It’s an unusual kind of home movie in which the filmmaker directly participates in the film’s making, rather than simply observing and documenting. I’m sure it made a difference that these films were shot by Janet in her teens and early 20s – there’s a youthful eye behind this camera.

–Jen

Find high-resolution extended versions of this film on the Internet Archive through our File Directory.

Music: “Baby That’s Me” by The Cake

In the mid 80′s, when the Super8 format was on the way out, all the Photo Supply stores were discounting the last of the Super8 gear. I bought a kit with the camera and a Eumig projector for about $250. The 64 XL had a very sharp zoom lens, and I made about a dozen films with it, and a few sound films before Super8 Sound film became unavailable. At the time, you could buy Super8 film by mail that came with processing. You mailed the exposed film in a postage-paid envelope to Kodak; they mailed the processed film back to you.

By 1995, when I shot this film, everyone was using video cameras, so whenever I shot with my Eumig, people would get a puzzled look and ask me what kind of camera it was.

A few things to notice in the film:
- In the third shot, you can see St. Michael’s Russian Orthodox Cathedral. Sitka was once the center of the Russian American Company’s fur trade. Russian dances are performed daily for the tourists, most of whom are visiting for the day from cruise ships.

- What appears to be a very boring shot of a brick is actually part of a memorial downtown for fishermen who have died at sea. The brick in the shot is my Uncle Ron’s.

- I was lucky to catch two Red Snapper which you see being gutted in the film. To me they seemed huge – they ended up being our dinner – but nobody else was impressed; it seems Sitkans are only impressed by salmon.

- Late in the film, there are several shots of the salmon heading up the mouth of the river to spawn.

*I know, I know, whales are mammals! Music: “Krakatoa” by Clouseaux, courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network.

This was March of 2000. A trip to Shiprock, New Mexico with a class from Massachusetts College of Art. This was my first semester using film after 3 years of working with video. I loved it! I was totally hooked and ended up shooting more film than video. It just felt more immediate because i was editing a lot in camera. Film definitely informed my video work forever after this.

Complete high resolution video of this footage is available for download from the Internet Archive. See our File Directory for a link.

The adventure takes place on the Rogue River in Southern Oregon in 1979. The fishing outfitter, River Trips Unlimited of Medford, Oregon, is still very much in business and celebrating 41 years of river tripping on the wild Rogue.

From California, contributor Diane Dobronte offers a little bit of the fish tale:

The trip was during the time that my dad, Dr. Frank Dobronte, was in private practice as a periodontist in Pleasanton, CA. There were 10 or so other dentists in his study group and they met once a month to study together and keep up to date on the latest information in dentistry – they went on fishing trips together every year or every six months plus other fun stuff with the wives. My dad was about 10 years older than all the other men and outlived them all but one….. He always thought they exercised too much….haha…his love was fishing and vodka…I do know they had a great time together.

Be sure to check out our File Directory for a link to the unedited, full resolution version of this film on the Internet Archive, which also includes footage from Washington, D.C., and a Mother’s Day celebration with the kids — all with glorious SOUND!

Contributor Diane Dobronte from California adds some detail:

Part of the Dobronte Family at the Sugar Cane Fields on Oahu, Hawaii in the early 1950′s…

My father, Dr. Frank Dobronte, shot this when we were invited to the factory to watch the process and tour. We lived in Hawaii from about 1951 – early 1955.

I don’t know if they still burn the fields now but the whole process started by a dramatic controlled burning of the fields prior to harvest. Then the cane was collected, washed and squeezed by heavy presses to extract the sugar cane juice – the juice went through a series of dryings… they gave us little cotton bags about 4in x 4in of the pure raw cane sugar. it was so delicious… I can still taste it. Not like the white sugar we are used to.

My Dad is filming and I’m with my Mom in the clip – don’t know where my other sisters are but there are 4 of us, and then 5 when my brother was born – in fact my Mom is probably pregnant in this film. In the clip is my Mom, Mary Dobronte, and myself, Diane. Great memory and I can still smell the wonderful sweet smell of the whole experience………..so glad to have found this!

As always, see our File Directory for a link to twenty five minutes of high quality footage of the Dobrontes’ experiences in Hawaii, available at the Internet Archive.

And, appropriately for a lovely summer day, we have a fishing satire for you, direct from the 1980s. I love these kinds of home movies – a true stab a moviemaking, complete with gross-out horror effects, slapstick comedy, and stunts performed on a moving truck.

Contributor Kurt Polzin of New York City fills us in:

In 1983, I was a student at the University of California, Davis. I happened across a Kodak Brownie 8mm movie camera at the thrift store one day and picked it up for $2. The film was still available at the drug store, as was the processing, which was $6 a roll. My roommate Mike and I made a couple of short films, each one roll long, and then we got an idea for our big film.

Growing up in the ’70s, we had both seen the fishing programs that aired on the weekends, and we marveled at how dull they were. We decided to do a parody of a fishing show called “Fish World.” I invested in two rolls of film and, on another trip to the thrift store, I found a fancier Kodak Brownie that had a 3-lens turret (normal, wide angle, and telephoto). We shot the film a few miles from campus at Putah Creek. One of the actors, our friend (who was also named Mike), loved fishing and brought all his equipment. We wrote all the sight gags together and shot it in a few hours.

The camera had automatic exposure and, as the sun got lower, the shots filmed facing into the sun grew more and more underexposed. The final scene, where the fishing guide jumps on the truck, was edited partially in the camera. I tried to edit in the camera whenever possible to save film and because I didn’t have a viewer. I did all my splicing with a magnifying glass!

After sending the film to Lost in Light, I emailed Mike and Mike to see if they wanted DVD copies of the film. We hadn’t been in contact for years. We caught up on each other’s lives and, in May 2007, I got together with Mike and his wife when they were visiting New York City. We made plans for both Mikes and I to get together in June and watch the DVD of “Fish World.”

Music: “I Can’t Hold it Down” by Andy Sullivan and “Ana’s Guitar, Open Window” by Gurdonark, courtesy of CCMixter

Fishing on the Zambezi ca. 1953-55

We begin this featured bit of home movie with my brother Timothy running around in Lederhosen. It was filmed at our home in Pretoria, South Africa. We lived in Pretoria while my father was a member of the air crew of the aircraft assigned to the U.S. Embassy. My father would have purchased the Lederhosen one of the times the plane was taken to Geneva Switzerland for annual maintenance. I remember Dad saying that they were free to travel for about two weeks. Whenever our father pointed his movie camera at us, my brother and I usually performed one of three actions: run in circles, pretend to fight, or climb a tree. My brother chose to run around in this solo performance. He looks to be around four years old so this would have been filmed in 1954. I am now thankful that I didn’t get Lederhosen as well. This short immediately preceded the fishing trip on the film reel and we thought it would be a humorous short subject to lead into the feature.

This piece of film is labeled only “Fishing on the Zambezi” and was filmed between 1953 and 1955. Since the Zambezi is the fourth largest river in Africa (2,574 km) and stretches from Zambia to Mozambique on the Indian Ocean, this isn’t very precise. My father flew into many airports along the path of the Zambezi which further complicates pinpointing the location. The fish you see on the pole are tiger fish. Tigers are common so they are not much help in identifying the location. A Google search on “tiger fishing” shows that they are still a popular sport fish. One web site says that the “Tigers are strong and fast and come from the wrong side of the tracks.” Tigers are edible though bony.

My father is the man filmed by himself and wearing a blue jacket. I noticed that his safari hat has a band which would place the trip after a safari he was on in 1952. If anyone knows if he is wearing an Air Force L2A flight jacket that would help me with the date since that jacket was stolen from customs in Geneva.

I going to make an educated guess that this fishing trip took place on the upper Zambezi which is above Victoria Falls. My father was in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) many times and hunted there. I’ve looked web sites that feature tiger fishing on the Zambezi and I much prefer what I see here. I’m not sure how I would feel if I was fishing there myself but I love the boat they used. I think of Humphrey Bogart and the African Queen. Now you see modern houseboats and fishing boats. Toward the end of the film a native in uniform is seen on the bank.

If anyone can identify the uniform please leave a comment. If I know where the film was made I can figure out the date from other records.

For more from the Lundys’ collection of home movies of Africa, please click the “Africa” category on the right. And be sure to check out our File Directory for a link to a full-resolution version of the complete home movie featured in this post, available from the Internet Archive.

Music: Tshokwe_Angola_1