Each month (for a total of 20 months), I am participating in a collaborative art project called, “With a Pencil in my Pocket.” This project was conceived of by Lea Redmond and briefly, involves sending subscriptions to 500 Colored Pencils to 150 artists around the country. Each month, those artists take part in an activity inspired by their pencil’s color and document that experience in a one-page journal. I am one of them.

The images below document my first six months in the project. You can follow my participation on Flickr here or the entire project on this blog.

Fans of home movies and moving image archives may want to check out the guidelines for this short film competition, sponsored by the Association of Moving Image Archivists: PRESERVING THE WORLD’S MOVING IMAGE HERITAGE — AMIA Short Film Competition. As the competition website explains, the challenge is to create a film or video that conveys the importance
of preserving the world’s moving image heritage.

The entry deadline is August 15th, so start shooting!

© designboom

Olivia is thinking a lot about aging. We met as two young American women studying abroad in Poland and ended up as roommates. We seem to be on similar wavelengths ever since though we are more often than not continents apart.

I imagine our connection is in part because we’re almost the same age, but I think it’s more causedly our having the same orientation to life. We love to travel, to lose ourselves in the foreignness of a place, and to use that isolation to find ourselves, once again, but through our thoughts and wonderings rather than what our family or home town or circle of acquaintances would make us out to be.

Like Olivia, I can’t seem to shake long periods of thought about getting older as I approach a new decade. Some of my questions and concerns about getting older are worked out in my films; others lie in wait for me until 4am like this morning.

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It seems both miraculous and terrifying that at every moment we are being torn down and built up, cell by cell. From the moment we are born, we are in a continual state of change. Birthdays, those customary celebrations, would have us think otherwise: that we remain 19 until we are 20. But, in fact, we are 19 but a mere second, then time trots on and we are instantly older, different, if only microscopically.

The status quo (in Latin, literally, “the state in which” we find ourselves) is one of constant flux. If we accept this fact, then it’s no wonder why it’s so hard to know, much less love, oneself. To do so, we must accept ourselves as constantly changing persons–often without evening knowing the scope or origin of those changes–and embrace ourselves anew with openness, flexibility.

Further still, how do we remain receptive to the changes in those around us when we cannot predict our own metamorphosis as we age?

These are the quiet fears of a late twenty-something as she creeps closer to the three decade mark.

Perhaps most disturbing to me is that as soon as we pass puberty, our bodies begin a continual process of decay. No more new teeth. Our existing ones only get older, damaged by plaque or rot. Our hair, once shiny and smooth, only slowly loses pigment until it turns gray, becomes wiry, and grows in ever stranger places. And our skin, once soft and supple, starts its wrinkling, sagging, and spotting. Our body passes a peak of newness that occurs somewhere in the late teens and early twenties. Then, we are no longer (in body) our freshest selves.

To many people around me, these musings on getting old are an annoyance and easily dismissed. How can they feel pity for a twenty-something who worries about her age? A young thing who doesn’t even know what being old is?

To the contrary, I think it’s at this moment when I can most profoundly feel my youth slipping away. After all, I just had it in hand! And now, at this precise moment, it’s just barely beyond my grasp–not miles away in the distance–and I can almost still be it but not quite. I wonder if it’s not unlike the loss of first love. While it may not be the most profound, the most devastating loss of one’s life, and with more time, may reveal itself as a naive interlude, at the moment, the pain borders on the ludicrous. It’s the freshness of the loss that makes it (or makes it seem) all the more palpable.

It’s also at this tender age that I haven’t quite achieved the self-acceptance that I hear many a wiser person express about him/herself. I’m still in the same age range as celebrities with their impossible bodies. I’m still targeted by the fashion ads and movie posters…or I’m just beyond their target, making me newly abandoned for the fresh crop of young twenty-somethings that are always waiting in the pipeline. It’s the time when you first have the startling realization as you watch young women on the street that you can no longer tell if they’re 16 or 26. All you know for sure is that you are no longer that young woman and that the world no longer sees you as young as you see yourself.

When I seize up at these realizations, I try to do my best to practice aging gracefully. After all, I’ll be aging for the rest of my life, so no better time to start than now. So, I try to invoke the spirit of Johnny Cash (who continually reinvented music till the very end) and Agnes Varda (whose late films, especially, celebrate her ongoing process of aging) and try to open my arms wide, wide, wide open, ready for anything. Even the age spots and wrinkles.

Back in 2002, I was blogging before the practice had hit mainstream. I was studying abroad in several European countries, and I had begun sending out long-winded emails (which I began calling my “travelogues”) full of descriptions of the places and the people I encountered to my friends and family and people I met along the way.

As a young Southern woman on her own for the first time, I approached the world with a great sense of curiosity and my journals were imbued with a both a sense of humor and whimsy. For instance, the titles of two such entries, one from Poland and one from France, respectively, were titled, “Break Dancing for the Pope” and “Frog Eaters and Freedom Fries.”

Before long, these emails were being forwarded to people I had never met, who would then send their comments and thoughts back to me. It was strange and also satisfying to hear how these strangers responded to my many (mis)adventures as I discovered my sense of independence. Eventually, I signed up for a (now defunct) Diaryland.com site, where my online diary took on more readers.

When my travels ended, however, so did these missives. Once the majority of people in my life were no longer characters just passing through, it was hard to write so light-heartedly about their personality strengths and flaws in so public a manner. And the daily tasks, which had often been the source of a funny cultural faux-pas or encounter (such as buying stamps in a Polish post office) no longer existed. I stopped carrying my little notebooks to jot down funny, overheard conversations or to record my latest thoughts on 17th century architecture. And, despite some encouragement to re-write these stories into a book, my journals remained untouched in the nether of my email accounts. (Thankfully, a dear friend compiled them all into three bound notebooks for me so there is an archive!)

Shortly thereafter, as I wrapped up my undergraduate degree, my interest in filmmaking began. I took my first video class, more on a lark than anything else. But in that first class, I had an awakening:  We watched films by Ross McElwee, Alan Berliner, and Agnes Varda. I had never seen anything like them. Not only were these films unlike any documentaries I had ever seen (my canon had, until that point, consisted mostly of  a collection of Nature episodes on PBS or agit-prop style docs about social issues), but they were drawing upon their own lives, and, in Varda’s case, travels and experiences, to tell stories and pose questions in an essay of sound and image. These films thrilled and inspired me and left me with haunting thoughts, images, and, most significantly, questions about what I had seen and what it all meant.

And so, in that very first class, with the most raw and rudimentary of skills and tools, I set out and made a short film about my grandmother.  Looking back at that 7-minute piece, I shrink with embarrassment. The craft is abominable and the tone trite and self-indulgent. But in that film was the seed for the one I would complete six years later, having finished film school and begun teaching video production as a college professor.

I like to think that this new film is closer in craft and quality to the films that first inspired me so. In any case, it’s a far cry from that first attempt years ago.
It seems I’ve traded my early travelogues for a more labored kind that allow me to use material from my own proverbial backyard in way that doesn’t seem to mock or exploit the people and places I can’t ever really leave behind (i.e. my family and my hometown). Instead, it seems this new form even allows me to celebrate those roots, both the heartwarming traditions and the less flattering truths, that make my stories layered enough (in my opinion, at least) to grace the silver screen for all to see.

Now that this first film is finished, I am once again feeling that call to create, to write. And I wonder what form it should be–another film? fiction or non? short or feature? Or is it maybe time to start over again with a plane ticket, pencil, and notebook?

I came to filmmaking late in my academic career, so it was without any formal photography training and during my first year of film school that I set out to learn best archival practices, digitization techniques, and the ins and outs of small format filmmaking.While there’s no substitute for learning hands-on through trial, error and frustration as I did, the following is a collection of websites and online resources that most helped me as I stumbled through the first phase of preservation:

Working with Home Movies

General Interest & Footage Sources

Home & Amateur – A blog about home movies and amateur film, whose contributors hail from the Center for Home Movies.

Lost in Light – The documentation of a (now complete) free home movie transfer project, including home movies, categorized by topic, many of them available for Creative Commons remixing.

Prelinger Archives/Archive.Org - A collection of home movies includes amateur films and videotapes from the collections of the Center for Home Movies, the Prelinger archives, other home movie aficionados. Many of the movies are public domain or available for use under Creative Commons guidelines.

Supplies & Small Format Filmmaking Resources

Film Shooting – A great online source for news about all things home movies and small format filmmaking based in Norway. Given that two major print publications (Super8Today and SmallFormat) have shut down their presses in the last year, this online news pool is essential.

On Super 8 – This site bills itself as “impartial and comprehensive resources for today’s Super 8 and 8mm small gauge film makers.” It’s all that and more; based in the UK.

Pro8mm- The only movie house I know of in the US that specifically specializes in Super-8 film stocks and transfers. In 2008, they added a Milliennium II Scanner with daVinci 2K color corrector to their transfer menu, capable of SD or HD scans. It’s the premier scanning system for small  gauge film.

Super 8 Site – A German Super8 site. The “links and addresses” page is worth a look.

Urbanski Film – Though the website screams 1990s, I’ve ordered and been very pleased with film cleaning supplies, projector bulbs, and other hard-to-find small format equipment.

And though it goes without saying, eBay is an immense (if risky) resource for finding old Super 8 cameras and projectors, as well as professional VHS decks for digitizing old videocasettes.  Before purchasing the unknown, I’ve found the folks on the AMIA Small Gauge/Amateur Film Interest Group listserve to be incredibly helpful and willing to share their expertise.

Preservation & Care Information

Brodsky & Treadway -The transfer house for rare, valuable, and fragile home movies. Their companion site, Little Film, contains detailed, downloadable tips and instructions for caring for home movies.

Home Movie Day – A major project of the Center for Home Movies, Home Movie Day is an international celebration of home movies. The site contains lots of information about film handling and care as well as links to home movie day events across the country and the globe. Home Movie Day also keeps a running list of home movie transfer houses.

National Film Preservation Foundation – A clearinghouse of film care basics and resources for more advanced users. Be sure to download their extensive film preservation guide.

If there are other resources you’d like to know about, leave a comment below and I’ll share what info I might have!

As part of the panel, I’ll share clips of For Memories’ Sake and also tips and tricks for finding and using archival home movie footage in independent films.

Panel Description: Super 8 is the OG of guerilla filmmaking. Find out how you can make this beautiful, classic film gauge work in an HD world. From finding a camera to choosing film stock, scanning and encoding options, inclusive workflows, tips that make the difference and more. These aren’t your grandpa’s home movies…

Panelists:

Philip Vigeant – Pro8mm
Adam Garner – Trigger Studios
Branden Lower – A Bryan Photo
Ashley Maynor – Preservation Project Films

Add it to your SXSW schedule here!

Just in time for the holidays, I’ve added an assortment of photo postcards to a new online Etsy shop! All the items (just postcards for now) are  reproductions of  original photographs taken by my grandmother and featured in my documentary, For Memories’ Sake.

All proceeds from the shop go towards the ongoing preservation of Angela’s amazing collection, so stock up! If there’s an item that’s not currently available in the shop that you’d like to see, please send me a message through Etsy or email me at ashley@preservationprojectfilms[dot]com.

Home Movie Day is important because our lives, our recollections, and our truth is recorded in home movies. One day, what the heck, c’mon! -Steve Martin

Sadly, I won’t be hosting a Southwest Virginia Home Movie Day this year.  Instead, I’m focusing on distribution efforts for my upcoming film about my grandmother’s home movie collection, For Memories’ Sake.

There are many ways, however, to participate in this year’s International HMD activities, both in person and on the web. Check out the many other locations for Home Movie Day 2009, this year’s revised and updated film transfer guide, and Home Movie Day’s Facebook page.

Small format and Super-8 enthusiasts may also be interested in a post I wrote recently for Self-Reliant Film on Super-8 Resources.

Please join me, filmmaker John Petitt, and photographer JJ. Tizou for a special screening of four films along the theme of “Photographic Memory,” curated by Scribe Video Center’s Producer’s Forum at the Ibrahim Theater in Philadelphia.

I’ll also be offering a “master class” workshop the day before on caring for family archives. More information about that can be found here. 

Descriptions of the films and event information is below:

The Ibrahim Theater at International House

3701 Chestnut Street

Philadelphia, PA, 19104

See map: Google Maps

Sunday, September 20, 2009 – 7:00pm

Tickets: $10 general, $8 students/seniors, $5 Scribe members

How does the act of taking a photograph define a moment in time?

Four documentaries, including a preview of Ashley Maynor’s For Memories’ Sake, explore how the photographs triggers and influences our memories and how image making can be a transformative act in itself.

For Memories’ Sake (US, 2009, work-in-progress, 30 min)
Directed by Ashley Maynor
Angela Singer is a Southern homemaker who has taken an average of a dozen photos a day for the last 35 years, compiling a mysterious and strange archive of over 150,000 photographs of her daily life. Her life and photography hobby is revealed through the lens of her granddaughter, filmmaker Ashley Maynor. Investigating one Southern homemaker’s obsession with the photographic image, the film asks questions about the nature of photography as a form of memory and captures a cross-generational portrait of two Southern women whose lives as image-makers have taken very different paths.

Ulysse (France 1982, 35mm, color, 22 min. French w/ Eng sub)
Directed by Agnes Varda
Agnes Varda, considered the grand mother of the French New Wave, returns to a striking photograph she took in 1954, its subject a naked man on the beach beside a young boy, also naked, and the corpse of a goat. When the subjects, tracked down thirty years later, fail to remember the circumstances surrounding the photo, the film becomes a haunting meditation on the elusive nature of memory as well as a fascinating introduction to Varda’s photography and its influence on her filmmaking.

Looking Back (US, 2008, 6 min)
Directed by Emile Bokaer
presented by Media That Matters
Albert Lewis struggles with addiction and with memories of war. His photography helps him survive in a supportive community of homeless veterans where he eloquently uses his picture taking as a way to look back, but to also gauge his and his fellow veterans’ progress.

The Archivist (US, 2007, 4:46 min)
Directed by John Petitt
Originally made as part of the First Person Festival’s, ‘Object of My Affection’ documentary film competition, The Archivist profiles Philadelphia based photographer J.J. Tiziou and his vast digital photo archive. Tiziou reflects on his relationship with the archive and challenges of organizing and maintaining it.