ONCE OR TWICE A YEAR my mother would set up the projector, erect the rolling screen, draw the curtains and painstakingly load up one of the Super 8 cine movies she’d filmed during the previous year or two. It was a laborious, fiddly business.
Looking back at those movies it appears my childhood was passed entirely in mid summer, my father and other relatives cavorting on the lawn and mouthing wordlessly to the camera (Super 8 movies didn’t have sound).
But that’s not my childhood as I remember it. Those balmy summer days on the lawn only occurred a couple of times a year. My father never cavorted. But cine films were far too precious to waste on the everyday; they existed solely to record holidays and special occasions.
When my children were growing up, and before the smartphone era when everyone records everything all the time, I made a special effort to film the mundane, the quotidian events that truly represented their childhood.
It’s vastly easier now. You’ve all got top quality video cameras in your pockets. So use them, not just for special events, but to capture life as you live it. Your children will thank you for it.
