Children as filmmakers

[Angus]

I would have started earlier.

I started still photography when I was four or five, my dad taught me to use his Zeiss-Ikon folding 120 camera! I even took it to schol with me when I was six!

About the age of 9 or 10 (early 1980's) I discovered my grandfather's clockwork Quarz 8mm camera languishing in a cupboard and used to play with it. I wanted to shoot films but my dad, having no expience with movie film and no projector was uncertain. All the instructions were in Russian and it has various supplementary lenses, the purpose of which we didn't know. My grandfather passed away before I was born so we had no way at the time of fully understanding how it functioned.

I came up with the idea of buying a film, making a 20 foot long chart, and filming it with the various lenses to find out if they affected focus...but we still didn't have a projector at the time. Dad's very much a 6x4 (or 4x4) print man...no cine, no slides.

So finally when I was a teenager I was able to film...but with super 8!

I am happy to report that in 2001 I did run the old Quarz with FomaPan and Kodachrome film. It still works, stille exhibits jumping of the frame line at the end of a roll (just as grandad's films did) and the supplementary lenses are mostly close-up lenses....and an 85 filter!

[Salla]

Nice to know that there are other women as well. In the Finnish forum there's a woman every now and then asking or making comments but it is pretty rare.

Anyway, thank you for interesting answers! There's no deadline for this so you can continue answering. I will keep waiting.

[Salla]

What is the program of study in which you get to write such an interesting dissertation? Psychology? Anthropology? Media Studies? I did both a Masters and a Ph.D in Critical Studies at UCLA and my dissertation focusing on gender in American television seems kind of routine in comparison. :roll:

Good luck with everything

Tim

I am ethnologist so European Ethnology at the University of Turku, Finland is the right address.

If you are interested you can check my (university) homepage; there's also a link to my personal homepage but unfortunately it is not updated yet so you can't find anything about children and memories there. But my university homepage contains correct information.

http://www.hum.utu.fi/kansatiede/salla.html

[Superbus_]

Superbus, I also think I am the only woman writing here. I also keep teasing Finnish filmmakers in their forum with my non-technical questions

Hmm, what would I say about women as filmmakers. There are some of them. I have around 70 hours film material for my dissertation, approximately 70 filmers and ten of them are women. That is a rough estimation. But interestingly, nearly all amateur film researchers are women!

Thank you.
I'm interested in your research - please send me the where can I will find the final results of your Phd publication (I hope you will share with the results with the Internet community...).
60-10 the percentage: this is good! (sometimes better than the political activity of women in many countries)
But I forget, Finland is different. I'm not sure but I think women are more interested in super 8 filmmaking as an art or self-expression and man as a technical thing - but I know these are just stereotips...

[Salla]

This autumn some of my texts (or short articles) will be published in some publications, one of them in English in the Internet. I will let you know when they are available. The dissertation will take some time before it is finished but I will let you know about it too when it is time for it.

And one more word about women. It may be that so many women have sent me their films because they have been interested in my PhD thesis - or rather it's theme children, home and everyday life. Maybe the percentage is not that high among all filmmakers, I don't know.

Thinking of "my" material... It is everyday life, children, other relatives, home what these women have been filming, not any art films. In other words just ordinary home movies. But I know there are women who make "serious" films as well, not just going around with their camera. But it is these ordinary unedited home movies which interest me most at the moment.

[Andreas Wideroe]

How old were you when you filmed?
What did you film? What kind of subjects or themes dis you have?
How many films did you shoot?
Did you watch your films afterwards with your family, relatives or friends?
What do you think about your hobby nowadays?

I was about 12 years old.

We filmed skateboarding and made our own skateboard shortfilms very inspired by the American pro skate films. We shot hours of films. Maybe as much as two hours a day. After filming we went into the home of one of my friends, ate icecream and watched everything we had filmed - over and over again.

Today it's more a job than a hobby, but I still enjoy filming.

[audadvnc]

I didn't shoot movies as a kid; my dad's R8 Kodak was too precious to endanger on a brat. I loved still photography, though - lots of 620 and 127 gauge b&w of my sisters & pets doing silly things. But when I was 12 I found my grandfather's old 16mm projector and a bunch of old home films from the 1920's in the basement - that's probably what got the wheels going in my head.

Nowadays I let my 9 year old daughter shoot with my video and Super 8 cameras. She prefers the video. But she really prefers to be in front of the camera performing, rather than shooting.

[Salla]

But when I was 12 I found my grandfather's old 16mm projector and a bunch of old home films from the 1920's in the basement - that's probably what got the wheels going in my head.

Really that old? Are the films in a safe place? In Finland, we have only one or two amateur films from the 1920's so they are precious things here...

[audadvnc]

They are classic old home movies. My grandparents' honeymoon at Niagara Falls - only barely recognizable anymore. Lots of shots of my mother as a little girl - she looked a lot like my daughter. Grandpa's big Packard. Some pristine shots of an industrial trade show from the 30's - my guess is that the family didn't watch it much, it doesn't show much damage from projector usage. I transferred the lot of them to SVHS years ago and kept the films on 400' reels, but otherwise not archived with any particular care. I had my mother watch the video and give a running commentary, so there is now a sound track of sorts. We moved recently, I should try to track down their wherabouts.