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Who We Were: A Snapshot History Of America By Michael Williams, Richard Cahan, and Nicholas Osborn |
Home Movies From Square America
Just in time for the holidays my DVD offer is back! Anyone ordering my new book Who We Were: A Snapshot History of America before December 25th will receive a copy of a DVD-R I just put together of clips from my home movie collection. The film line-up is slightly different than the original DVD offered (it's a little more family-friendly). Here's what you'll get!
1926 Trans-Atlantic Cruise: Shipboard recreations- Blindfolded Boxing, Regular Boxing and one scary mask. Here's an excerpt:
1927 Rodeo in Dubois, Wyoming. Cowboys, Indians, riding roping etc... another quick excerpt- a Cowboy vs. Indian Tug-O-War (and yes those are real Native Americans)
1932 Illinois Fair: Great footage of Acrobats, Dancers, etc..., at a Illinois carnival.
1930s Upside-Down Train Ride: A short film of a train ride that was intentionally spliced onto the reel upside-down (at least I think it was intentional). Here's the train footage but on the DVD you'll also a strange bit of stop motion animation that was on the same reel.
1940s Family Hijinks: A short reel of folks at the beach, acting out skits, and some of the coolest bike riding footage you're likely to see.
1950s Sychronized Swimming: Just in time for the Olympics! A hauntingly beautiful 8mm home movie of some synchronized swimmers-- Busby Berkeley by candlelight. Here's a taste but there's more on the DVD
1950s Double-Exposed Baby: Unintentional surrealism at it's best!
Double-Exposed Baby from Square America on Vimeo.
1960s Solar Eclipse: His Majesty the Sun!! Shot in time-lapse and through a filter, it's less an eclipse than a psychodelic pink apocalypse. Here's the whole thing but believe it's going to look much better on your TV screen
That's just a taste of what you're going to get! The line-up also includes three short films documenting a Japanese-American family, a 1940s car ride to Palm Springs for some kind of cowboy gathering, a 1950s film of a Chicago girl celebrating her 10th birthday, a sublime film of a 1950s dance party all shot in extreme close-up, a very short film of a mysterious mailman, footage of a African-American shriners parade & picnic, and finally, perhaps my favorite film, footage from the 1965 (and I think '67) Tournament of Roses Parade filmed off of TV- the flickering twilight of the American Empire.
I should note that the DVDs are going to be a no-frills affair (I just used iDVD to put it together and will be ripping them here at home) though I hope to post a downloadable PDF of DVD package artwork and brief program notes here before we ship them out.
Special thanks go out to Andy Uhrich, Michelle Peutz, and Anne Wells of Chicago Film Archives who did such a great job on the video transfers!