Do you look for old 8 mm films at flee markets?

[Super-Swede]

I always do myself! Not because I am interested in people privat lifes, but to look for old pictures of my home town, houses, cars everything that is familiar with the 60´s and 70´s. Recently I got hold of 2000 meters of r8 film and it showed old trams before they took them away in 1967 in my mothers home town and other beautiful pictures of a typical swedish town in the 60´s. The colours were just beautiful! If I hadn´t saved that film, maybe some very valuable 60´s documents would have been destroyed.

[tlatosmd]

I must admit I don't bother projecting footage by strangers. As much as I love the look of the small gauges, I prefer seeing it on a TV or computer screen if it's not my own or someone's I know. :oops:

[VideoFred]

I always do myself! Not because I am interested in people privat lifes, but to look for old pictures of my home town, houses, cars everything that is familiar with the 60´s and 70´s.

I do exactly the same. But many of these films are full of scenes with dancing uncles and aunts on family partys. :lol: Most of the time they are drinking too much, too. :lol:

But you are very lucky with the tram films!
Here, in Ghent, Belgium, we had a very nice old tramway.
We still have a tramway, but supermodern, now.
I'm still looking for a 8mm film of this old tram.




Fred.

[Justin Lovell]

tram-ta-tram-tram tram trammity tram.

[Super-Swede]

I always do myself! Not because I am interested in people privat lifes, but to look for old pictures of my home town, houses, cars everything that is familiar with the 60´s and 70´s.

I do exactly the same. But many of these films are full of scenes with dancing uncles and aunts on family partys. :lol: Most of the time they are drinking too much, too. :lol:

But you are very lucky with the tram films!
Here, in Ghent, Belgium, we had a very nice old tramway.
We still have a tramway, but supermodern, now.
I'm still looking for a 8mm film of this old tram.

Fred.

I agree with the dancing uncles and boring shaky holiday-films and the films I talked about was no exception. It had a dog running round for ours and the tramfilm lasted not very long. Still I am sure that I could get maybe 1,5 ours of film from this material that is VERY interesting, not just to me, but to every citicen in this town since it is a document from the 60´s showing houses, streets, cars and people that has disappeared. And then we have the colours, it looks like it had been filmed yesterday. But 95% of these old films is just about christmas, birthday parties and holidays in the sun. It is the other 5% I am interested in, beautiful documents from a time that will never come back again.

[VideoFred]

It had a dog running round for ours

Yes, and I have several big reels from someone who was fascinated by flowers.. Endless scenes of flowers, flowers and flowers...

But you are right: the 5% is of great value, not only for the people from that specific village but for all of us, who are interested in the past.

I know someone who has an R8 transfer of... 1942 (US-no war scenes).
In color! Wonderful!

Fred.

[Justin Lovell]

well that's

tram-tastic!


sorry, i'm really bored.. too many hours spent authoring dvds...

j

[reedsturtevant]

I love the "found" footage that sometimes comes with old equipment but it's sort of sad for me to have old reels with babies and families...where are they now?

I did buy film from ebay just once - early 1960s R8 shot in Japan by a US military man on Okinawa. Has scenes of local people hunting dolphins or small whales from canoes and cutting them up on the beach, and what seems to be a Christmas ceremony at the military base where gifts are being presented to an elderly Japanese woman who has large tatoos on her face. Fascinating!

[CHAS]

I'm curious -- of the people who buy films at flea markets, yard sales, etc...how often do you find anything that you personally enjoy looking at?

I bought some "found Super-8/regular-8 footage" on e-bay a couple of times and man, was it boring...a bunch of crap -- an ugly suburban family out in the middle of nowhere endlessly riding their mountain bikes over little hills, doing jumps, etc. then the camera takes a shot of them eating food with their mouths open. Oh yeah, real lovely stuff...

Of course, if you see anything on e-bay advertised as "African American family, 1970s" or "Disneyland, 1950s" notice how the bidding goes through the roof!

[Joe Gioielli]

I bought a load off of ebay once. It all came from one family. It was regular 8 (I love retro-nyms). There was some cool aerial footage of the Grand Canyon, but most of it was the family pets. One reel was called "Emily and Charcoal-(has a nice Simon & Garfunkle sound to it) but it was just a little girl with a black cat.

I noticed that he must have had a decent camera, it had either a power zoom or he had a very steady hand.

I also liked looking at the living room. The fellow liked his electronics. Had a tv with a remote and a quad stereo system.

It is kind of eeire looking at 10 years of a family's life. The little kids in the first reels were the young adults in the later ones.

Interesting, but far from thrilling. Joe

[Evan Kubota]

"I did buy film from ebay just once - early 1960s R8 shot in Japan by a US military man on Okinawa. Has scenes of local people hunting dolphins or small whales from canoes and cutting them up on the beach, and what seems to be a Christmas ceremony at the military base where gifts are being presented to an elderly Japanese woman who has large tatoos on her face. Fascinating!"

That does sound cool. They hunt the dolphins by rounding them into coves and then applying electric current to the water, AFAIK... would be nice to see it preserved on film.

A Japanese woman with irezumi (tattoos) is pretty unusual. They are normally reserved for yakuza.. she may have been native Okinawan or possibly burakumin.

Seeing glimpses of other peoples' lives reminds me of Michael Apted's "Up" series, where the same group of people is documented every 7 years. I think it's on "49 Up" now.

I do have some R8 that a friend purchased from eBay... extremely faded. I looked at the first few seconds and it's some archery contest with very washed out colors and apparently overexposed.

[chachi]

I have been finding reels like that at flea markets for over 10 yrs! I have a HUGE collection from one family alone that spans from 1955 to 1985 about 30+ 400ft and 200ft reg8 & super8 reels.

I also have reels from a family that lived around the corner and it is neat to see the neibourhood in the 50's/60's. The reels were usually really cheap and I have about 3 shelves full of them, neat to see the olden days, but a little spooky when you consider the fact that you now own someones memories


Anyhoo, I always buy them if the price is right, but the price can be outrageous at times. Now that eBay exists, I have stopped buying films as they are easily obtained and could financially ruin me if I got carried away...

I like to see how things were back then and I figure If I didn't own them they would eventually become trash. It is rather spooky the fact that I now own somebody else's memories. I real burden and one that I am certainly concious of at times....

[CHAS]

It is rather spooky the fact that I now own somebody else's memories. I real burden and one that I am certainly concious of at times....

It's funny and sad how some people discard memories like this. A few years ago, some semi-homeless/dumpster diver dude I knew gave me a bag full of photos and documents he found in a trash can on Montana Ave., here in Santa Monica. I held onto it, not knowing what to do with it. Year later, my artist-wife decided to look thru it and did some research on the woman in the photos and found out that she had no more direct relatives and made a film based entirely on scanning the photos and documents; created a whole narrative based on the photos that were carelessly discarded because her last relative had died...so sad the way people's memories will be abandoned...it was actually a pretty good movie...

[downix]

I do this. So far, seen footage ranging from a babys first christmas, to some really old 30's B&W R8 footage shot on the deck of the USS Nevada. Amazing the shape it is in, honestly.

[chachi]

I have some really old B&W footage of a family from Saskatchewan feeding their 2yr old shots of vodka! the look on the kids face is priceless, yet he keeps going back for more! The films in the big lot from that one family are great, they traveled all over the world and almost each reel is of a foriegn hot spot. I also have footage of a helicopter crashing onto the back of a boat in what looks like Alaska.

It also neat that there is one reel where this gentleman and a freind go to the beach to shoot and his friend has one of the first ever video cameras, very cool. I always planned to transfer these and try and locate a relitive, but thats alot of work..


Chas, is that film available for viewing?