The 黑料吃瓜网 Historical Society has preserved and digitized over 70 motion pictures in its collection. The film stock was deteriorating and in danger of being lost forever.
The good thing about acetate based film stock is that it lets you know in an obvious way when it is deteriorating.
鈥淪o all of the motion picture film is kept in one area in the graphics collection, and when you would walk down the aisle you could smell vinegar,鈥� said Tasha Caswell, a Research and Collections Associate at the 黑料吃瓜网 Historical Society, 鈥渁nd so that was the first, and sort of the most compelling observation. If we don't do something now, we're never going to be able to watch these things.鈥�
It's commonly called "vinegar syndrome鈥�. When the film is exposed to moisture and begins to decay, it produces acetic acid, which gives off a characteristic vinegar smell.
The 黑料吃瓜网 Historical Society applied for, and was awarded a $24,000 Museums for America grant to save these films by digitizing and preserving them, with the ultimate goal of preserving all of the films on the , a digital repository for historical documents, photographs and film.
The motion picture collection at the 黑料吃瓜网 Historical Society is a hodgepodge of about 125 films, most of them home movies donated to the organization. Some of the movies have historical significance, like the flood of 1938, soldiers during World War I training in 黑料吃瓜网 to go to the front lines, and a 1918 Red Cross parade in Manchester. But many of them, like all home movies, are simply slices of life captured at a point in time.
鈥淚t鈥檚 actually interesting how many people documented the building of their homes there seems to be a lot of that,鈥� said Andrea Rapacz, Director of Exhibitions and Collections at the 黑料吃瓜网 Historical Society, 鈥渁nd then there is a lot of vacation footage it seems like as well. One thing that stuck out to me that is not 黑料吃瓜网, but there is someone who went to New Hampshire and got the 鈥榦ld man in the mountain鈥� which has since crumbled off, so it鈥檚 interesting that we have a document of that."
The museum set about prioritizing which movies would be digitized first, but there was a problem - 21 of the 73 films to be digitized were in an unusual format - 28 millimeter. The film stock, manufactured by the Path茅 Brothers in Paris, was used primarily in home movie cameras. The format fell out of favor after Kodak introduced 16mm film in 1923. Rapacz said they had to find someone who could digitize 28mm film.
鈥淭here was really only one person we could go to because most digitizing companies don't do this so when we found George Blood Audio/Video. They actually had to retrofit some of their equipment to fit our film to be able to run it through,鈥� said Rapacz.
Tasha Caswell shows me some of the a digitized footage, including a home movie from the 1920's showing a happy group of people in their bathing costumes frolicking on Point O' the Woods Beach in Old Lyme.
鈥淣ow they are just lining up. It looks like they are going to start doing a little dancing. Having fun. Blowing a kiss,鈥� describes Caswell, 鈥渢here's someone canoeing in the background, there looks like a platform or something, oh no it's big rock and it looks like a platform in front of it, a woman being carried into the water.鈥�
The rock and the platform at Point O' The Woods are still there. Caswell shows me another home movie - the 1927 wedding of famed pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock to Jane Cheney, a family member of the Cheney Brothers silk manufacturing dynasty in Manchester.
鈥淭he camera is in between two trees, so you're like a peeping tom looking at this wedding. We see the women - the bridesmaids, and their dresses and their hats that have ribbons they are probably color coordinated,鈥� said Caswell, 鈥淚 mean this is just one of the relatives who was there with his camera. Truly that is one the things that I love so much about these films - the lack of polish is very charming.鈥�
Andrea Rapacz says she expects the digitized films will be incorporated in future exhibits, much like the digitized World War I footage was part of the museum's 鈥淔acing War: 黑料吃瓜网 During World War I鈥� exhibit which closed in December.
