Last Sunday evening my family did something that is now an ancient, archaeological event to most households. I stood up something known as a “movie screen,” threaded some 8mm movie film into my built-like-a-tank, all-metal Wollensak projector, hung a towel over a shade-less window, and watched some home movies. Well, somebody’s home movies: we haven’t a clue who these people are or where they’re from, but we entertain ourselves with vintage views of holiday trips to Seaworld and Las Vegas, vignettes of grandmas hamming it up for the camera, and posed portraits staged by someone that doesn’t understand the difference between a movie camera and a still camera. Sure, at times we spend most of our energy mocking the fashions and the goofiness of candid family films, but the rest are spent taking in the culture of the time, without the sanitized or story-centric world found in period sitcoms and films of the same era. We viscerally recoil at the surprise inclusion of grandpa gutting pheasants. The things we’ve known our whole lives — tractors, tail-finned cars, cast-iron toys — as chipped, rusted, and dented, appear on the screen as brand-new.

On Sunday, we went through all the 8mm film I had — but, of course, not all the movies I own. The Wollensak isn’t a dual-format projector. Original 8MM film has one sprocket-size, but in later years Super8, with its larger frame-size and wider-spaced sprocket holes, was more prominent. An 8mm projector like my Wollensak won’t do Super8, and it was awfully late that night, so my small Blackhawk library had to sit idle until the next Movie Night. Blackhawk Films was a distribution company with thirty years of supplying old films to people in need of entertainment.

Blackhawk Films was originally the ‘bargain basement’ business of Kent Eastin, a film developer and distributor who had set up shop in Davenport, IA in the 1940s. With direct mail expert Martin Phelan, Eastin Pictures slowly saw its business supplanted by television and other newer technologies, and opened up its distribution wing as a mail-order source to consumers. Blackhawk Films licensed numerous classic films, from old shorts to newsreels, and performed archive-quality restoration and reproduction to produce the best quality copies for their customers. In the time before videotape and cable TV, the opportunities to see these films was mostly limited to weak-performing timeslots on local television stations or cheap movie theatre matinees. I remember, when I was quite young, my parents and their friends checked out a projector and a stack of 16mm movies from the library — there wasn’t such thing as a video rental place nor HBO. Blackhawk Films had a catalog full of old films in a variety of film sizes and formats, both silent and with sound, and their high-quality duplicates of fifty-year-old films provided all sorts of entertainment for families across the country.

Eventually, those other technologies that we rely on degraded Blackhawk’s market. Cheap, more-resilient VHS videotapes took hold quickly, and the expansion of cable television provided plenty of other opportunities for people to see these old movies and otherwise occupy family-time viewing. Although Blackhawk Films closed up shop in the very early 80s, their library eventually passed on to former Blackhawk Vice-President David Shepard. Shepard now operates Film Preservation Associates, which still restores old film, but also licenses those high-quality masters restored by Blackhawk to DVD producers.

While I’ve owned more in the past (and sold them off on eBay), of the thousands of movies in the Blackhawk Films library I only own four today: Our Gang/Little Rascals short Uncle Tom’s Uncle, Buster Keaton in Cops, Charlie Chaplin in The Immigrant, and Laurel & Hardy in Two Tars. The last three are each noted throughout the internet as a masterpiece of their respective stars, which should make them a nice primer for the kids’ ongoing lessons in appreciation of classic art. Me, I’m just entertained anyhow — a couple weeks ago, the kids rolled their eyes at me as I laughed out loud at Saps At Sea (not one of Laurel & Hardy’s best) on Turner Classic Movies. They were crafting at the kitchen table, unable to see the TV from their seats, but I’m sure their reaction was because they just didn’t know what they were missing. The Uncle Tom’s Uncle film might be a bit more than the kids can handle, though — not because of it’s racial overtones, but, between my wifey and I, we provide lengthy history lessons whenever appropriate…I don’t know that the kids would be willing to watch any more old movies after getting a lecture on the impact of post-emancipation politics and the history of minstrel shows. Better start simple, probably with Buster Keaton to appeal to the 8-year-old boy’s inherent love of people falling on their butts. If they like what they see, I don’t doubt we’ll run across more Blackhawk Films reels in the future.

There’s no doubt that, hiding in some closet of an elderly relative, there’s a box of round & flat metal cans with the Old Home Movies inside: 8mm films were a common format for recording a family’s lives and events, up until the late 1970s and early 80s when video took the forefront.

You might also be surprised to see some non-family films in the box: there might be small reels that the family got as souveniers of DisneyWorld, or newsreels from the forties, or previews of first-run films. As a kid, I remember my parents checking out a projector and a bunch of movies from the public library, and we had Silent Movie Night — and this was in the early 1980s. For a time, 8mm and 16mm films fulfilled most everything that videos do today — including quite a bit of pornography, which is very collectible today, if your elderly relatives were naughty that way. The rest of the films are available all over the market, at a variety of prices, so a new collector can get started without a severe investment, while avoiding the frustration of not finding anything to buy. Films can be found at rummage sales, antique shops, and of course eBay, without too much hunting.
The problem is: once you’ve found the treasure-chest of old films, how do you use them anymore?

One positive is that the equipment is not too hard to track down; I see them at rummage sales and thrift shops on a regular basis. eBay is an excellent resource, with the basic projector going for around fifty dollars in useable condition. For most applications you’ll be looking for a ‘dual format’ projector. 8mm film came in two versions: the original version, which was a 16mm film stock split down the middle, and “Super8″, the later version, which is the same width but smaller sprockets in order to make the image bigger. The difference in sprocket holes means that projectors aren’t interchangeable…but, fortunately, numerous projectors from the sixties and seventies were designed to accept either frame size. 16mm projectors are a bit more expensive: this format is the kind we remember from gradeschool, when huge projection machines were wheeled in and out of classrooms on an A/V cart. The positive is that many school districts still have these projectors around, and you might be able to borrow, beg, or buy one from them.

One required piece of equipment you’ll need is a splicer and tape. Due to the age of the film and deterioration of any edits already in the film, you’re going to break a movie; it just happens. The old days of scraping film and gluing the ends together is long gone: Kodak made an amazing product called “Presstape” for quick splices of films. Purists might think this isn’t the ‘right’ way to do it, but if your purpose is to watch the movies and keep them in watchable condition, a presstape splice is better than nothing. This equipment is still available in new condition from professional camera stores, and isn’t particularly expensive. A special splicing machine is required — it, too, is available from pro stores — but the process is immensely simplified from the olden days. You place the two ends of the broken film in the splicer, overlapping slightly, and close the cutter to create an even splice. Add the tape — and, viola! — the film is repaired. This can be done without winding the film off the projector, if the break happens during a viewing, provided you can get the movie back on the sprockets.

Because the film is fragile and you might not want to risk repeated viewings, you may want to convert the films to video. Services do this for you, with a pretty good level of quality, but that quality comes at a hefty price if you’ve got a lot of film - and if it’s a copyrighted film, like Disney or a newsreel, they may refuse to duplicate it. If you’re feeling handy, there’s a few ways to do the conversion yourself. The film-to-video shakeup of the 1980s produced the kind of equipment needed to duplicate films. Sima (and a number of other manufacturers) produced a CopyKit: it is essentially a mirror and a piece of frosted plastic. The mirror reflects the projected image against the plastic, and the video camera films off the plastic screen. These can still be found, but it takes a little looking (again, eBay is the place to go).

Working just as well is a piece of bright white typing paper. Projecting at full-screen size dilutes a bunch of light, so set up the projector to fill a sheet of paper taped to the wall. Set up the video camera directly next to the projector, zoomed to frame the projected image. You might have to turn autofocus off, to avoid fuziness turning transfer. One drawback of doing your own conversion is lack of a Telecine conversion: movies have a different framerate from video, so there will be times when the camera is recording an image and the projector’s shutter is closed, projecting nothing. This will create a little ‘flicker’ that is noticeable, but often not any worse than the flicker of watching the film directly. If you’re computer-handy, there are utilities, like VirtualDub, which can change framerate and reduce the flicker as much as possible. Here is an example of an old film I converted with the typing-paper-VirtualDub method.

However, there’s no need for conversion if your intent is to watch them once in a while, popping popcorn and situating the whole family around the movie screen. This sort of ‘family-time’ is devoted to TV shows; give the family something a little different, especially if the movies include mom, dad, grandma, or grandpa in an earlier time. It’s a fun and different way to go through the family albums, and puts these old movies to the purpose they were designed for.