Looking Back Over a Century: Life, Work and Play in Maine
Maine Public celebrates Christmas with three broadcasts of Maine’s Home Movies: Treasures from Northeast Historic Film. The one-hour program airs Thursday, Dec. 26, at 9 p.m.; Friday, Dec. 27, at 1 a.m.; and Saturday, Dec. 28, at 2 p.m.
The film is a sensitive interpretation of home movies made by regular Maine people over the past 100 years. In creating a wholly new piece, the filmmakers honoured original creations lost in time–locked in barns and attics for decades and now in a Bucksport, Maine, archives.
"Home movies show us what the people of Maine chose to remember and treasure–family lives, work, the fun people made in often difficult environments and trying times," said filmmaker Sian Evans, in a news release. "Maine’s Home Movies asks us to see ourselves connected through time and place — we are they. Joy and and pride of place are undiminished by the passing of time. Maine’s Home Movies visits old Maine scenes we recognize and hold as icons of our regional culture. From Allan Preble Robinson’s horse-drawn logging on deep snow in the Kennebec Valley; to Veilleux family lobster bakes; from picnics in the woods to E.B. White’s saltwater farm and the Horovitz Collection of visits with friends (films saved from a Massachusetts dump). Maine is a state of mind."
Made entirely from films held at Northeast Historic Film (NHF), the film celebrates a unique nonprofit archives in Bucksport, Maine. With over 10 million feet of film, the archives is dedicated to saving the home movies of Maine families and places. To see more old films, and to support Northeast Historic Film’s work preserving regional film, visit www.oldfilm.org. Executive Director David Weiss is available for interviews.
More info on this film and a toolkit and trailer are available here.