Film in the family

This is not my father, surprisingly.

Well, actually, not so surprisingly. All these reels were given to me by my mother about eight years ago. Originally, I thought they were all just her old 8mm films from when she was a girl (films and embarrassment soon to come). But one of those films was not 8mm, but 16mm (higher quality and not often used for home movie making).

I started watching it and turns out it was an underground educational documentary made by some hippie commune in the 70's. And I thought, "Oh, someone just wanted to learn about organic farming and got this film." But then the voice over of a man came on and it was very strange. It was familiar, but I couldn't quite place it.

Then the end credits rolled along and the name "Ray Scruggs" rolled across screen, my mother's brother. I was floored. First to learn that Ray made films, but also that the film was pretty good - it won't get shown at Sundance, but still well done. And as a filmmaker myself I had no idea that we had another filmmaker in the family.

In that same box were my father's old reel recordings that I'm uploading here, but this one is actually the original reel of Ray recording the voice over track that was later married to the 16mm print.