A collection of 8 mm home movies
I’ve written before on this blog about collecting 8mm home movies and I’ve purchased several films over the last couple of years which I’m hoping to be able to digitise soon. Each of the films which I’ve bought has been quite interesting, but I’ve generally acquired films which were shot in the mid to late 1960s; this week however, I had quite a find when I picked up 20 8 mm home movies which were shot from the early 1950s up to about 1964.
At the moment, I haven’t had time to view the films because (as I said last week) I’ve been busy with a home garden project, but I’ve checked a couple of the films and they look to be in very good condition, with no obvious mould or dirt.
Each of the films is in its original cardboard box, with a rubber band holding the film tightly to the reel. In all the films I’ve looked at the rubber band is perished and solid, but since the films have leader this hasn’t marked the actual film.
The content of the films look interesting; The few pictured above show some of the boxes which have markings I can read and are typical of the contents although some of the other boxes have faded so I can’t actually see the writing.
Update:
To anyone interested I’ve digitised most of these films and posted them to a new site I’ve set up called Vintage Home Movies.
[…] which is a dual format unit, I wanted to get a more traditional unit to play some of the variety of standard 8 home movies I’ve acquired over the last few […]
My goodness!! Ive been doing the same thing for the past 5 years. I go to estate sales and pick up 8 and 16 mm film whenever they’re available and I must have about 25 to 30 developed reels. Ive thought about doing an installation with the movies being projected onto gallery walls in a number of loops. I still pick them up whenever I see them and currently have them stored away in a nice safe dry container. Maybe we can compare notes later!! Cheers