Tuesday, February 27, 2007

An Amazing Discovery in my Parent's Attic

I went to my parents house this past weekend and had an amazing discovery. In their attic I found a vintage 16mm camera from the 1930's, as well as an Austrian 8mm camera. Both cameras still work and are spring-wound. The story behind the 8mm camera was that it belonged to my grandfather's brother who lived in Hungary. He had the camera with him when he traveled from Europe to America. The ship he was on was called the Carpathia which stopped along its journey to rescue survivors from the Titanic. I was amazed to find these cameras along with old film reels from the 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's. Some of the 16mm footage was transferred to DVD by my dad's cousin and was in black and white as well as color. The film looked great still to this day and included footage of trips they went on like Washington DC in the 30's, South Florida in the late 30's, and unreal footage of pre-Castro Cuba in the 30's. The most impressive was B&W footage filmed by my grandfather when he took a trip to Hungary in 1947. He was a politician who was involved with an American association of Hungarian immigrants or something and he filmed orphanages, old buildings with bullet holes from WWII, as well as the streets of Budapest a couple of years after the war. It was an amzing discovery and I look forward to using these cameras on my own. I hope to use the found footage in some way as well in the near future, maybe for our 6th film.

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