The Super 8 Years
On this day, and many other days, my father was the cameraman.
Every year, around Presidents’ Day, I post a childhood memory to commemorate my father’s life on the anniversary of his death in February 2015. He was eighty-two. See the other years: My Father (Series).
My father took his role as the family cameraman seriously, carting the bulky Super 8 camera wherever we went: the park, the beach, road trips and even his business trips. When he was shooting indoors, where it was necessary to attach a spotlight to the camera, he was on the receiving end of much consternation. The lamp was appropriately called a sun-gun. It was blindingly bright, making it impossible to look towards the lens. We squinted or turned away, yelling at him to point the lamp elsewhere. Of course, you only see our mouths move. The soundtrack of those moments was lost to the rudimentary technology. Super 8 movies have no audio track.
The Bell & Howell Super 8 camera and projector were likely my father’s first major splurge after our arrival in the U.S. Like many parents, he felt it would be important to capture the youth of his children. He filmed holidays, birthdays, baptisms, communions, and graduations. The Super 8 years roughly cover our first decade in the U.S., from 1968 to 1979, spanning from a year after our arrival to my college graduation.
The handwritten notes on the yellow Kodak boxes are in my father’s familiar script, stylish and neat. The oldest reel is dated 1968, and the first scene on that tape is from Woodlawn Beach on Lake Erie, just south of Niagara Falls. He’s filming from behind us, facing the rolling waves. Our long shadows extend over the empty beach. We chuck pebbles at the waves from the water’s edge, staring out at the horizon. We are probably stretching out our legs after the long drive from New York City.
Everywhere we went in those early days was fresh and foreign. We had no familiarity with any location or place we visited, with the exception of the local church when we went to mass on Sunday. It was the only place where the conventions and routines were not novel. We knew when to stand, when to sit, and when to kneel. The empty beach scene reminded me of something one never forgets, that feeling of knowing you’re different. We spoke a different language, we were a large family, and our old-country customs had not yet been shed — for example, my parents were much stricter than the few American parents we had met. I had not yet lost that sense of being an outsider, but my father acted like he belonged, always encouraging us to make our own way. He took out his camera and filmed his family on empty beaches, but also in crowded places. He had grown up fighting for everything he was.
As the designated family cameraman, he’s rarely in the frame. On the few occasions when my mother takes over, she often cuts off his head or tilts the camera, resulting in a look familiar to fans of the 1960s Batman TV show where the villains’ lairs are always angled. In a short clip from that 1968 reel, she does both as he walks toward the camera with my brother at his side. Shea Stadium leans over in the background. Even off kilter, for a brief moment, he looks dapper in a black suit. But he gets too close and she beheads him.
He relished his cameraman role. It brought him tremendous joy to bring home a newly developed film, gather everyone, unroll the screen, one of us on the lights, so he could turn into the projectionist. We would enjoy the latest movie, laughing at our antics as we watched ourselves pose and mug for the camera. We’re fortunate to have these memories to cherish thanks to our cameraman.
See more at The Ink Never Dries: medium.com/matiz.
