Childhood's home movies: 8 mm memories in motion.

Byline: Doug McIntyre 

SOMEHOW, as my childhood family broke up and scattered across America, as all childhood families eventually do, I wound up in possession of 25 reels of 8 mm home movies, a true relic of my Eisenhower-Kennedy era youth.

Like millions of others, I never watched these movies but wouldn't dare toss them either. They remained dormant dust collectors, forgotten in a plastic bin under the bed with the dust bunnies, an old sneaker, and 16 cents.

Home movie night was a mid-20th century American ritual, yet still a rare treat. Eight mm film was pricey and not to be squandered. Plus my father was a draftsman with limited skills as a cinematographer. Working the camera meant he was stuck lugging it around and then setting up the screen, threading the projector, and for what? Twenty-two seconds of poorly lit, shaky footage of Uncle Harry sipping a Rob Roy at a long forgotten family gathering? Over time the screenings became less frequent; the camera eventually got shoved onto a closet shelf and ultimately forgotten.

But a week ago I was fishing under the bed for a stray slipper and found myself entangled in unspooled movie film - a rat's nest of it. That got me thinking. What's even on this film?

So, off it went to ProWest and back came a little less than two hours of ancient McIntyre family memories; scenes of Christmas morning excesses, long dead ancestors, '57 Chevys and '58 Oldsmobiles, a portly Uncle Jack nearly splitting the seams of his Marine Corps uniform as he leads the 1962 Memorial Day Parade. Frame after frame of hyper-kid camera mugging and awkward adult smoking, drinking and waving at the lens. My people were not show people and their on-camera embarrassment is palpable even four decades removed.

Twenty-five reels of 8 mm film covered an epoch of family history, July 30, 1954 - my parents wedding day - until sometime in the mid-70s when a few fleeting frames of a high school graduation party for my brother made it onto celluloid. Memories in motion, all the more valuable because they are so fleeting, so rare despite their ubiquity.

We live in a digital age; an era of micro-cameras. It's now possible to have a live Web stream of every moment of your life, literally cradle to grave coverage - which isn't a complaint. It's just something I noticed.

The digital revolution has ended the uniqueness, if not the ritual, of family movie night. We're buried in an avalanche of family video, so who ever bothers to watch it?

There's simply nothing special about photographing anything. As a result, just about everything is recorded and nobody cares. This isn't a meditation on the good ol' days when life was simpler; because life was never simpler. Intermingled with the smiles and camera antics of my ancient family movies are nervous sideways glances, furrowed brows and the cigarette smoke that would kill half of those waving at the camera.

I remember life being loud with laughter and tears, fights and prayers, dishes clattering and stereos blaring, dogs barking, kids in the street, ice cream truck bells ringing, sometimes quiet sobbing in the other room. The Wonder Years weren't all wonderful, just mostly wonderful.