This guest post was written by Madeline Mitchell, a 2019 Jr. Fellow in the Moving Image Section.
When you say “home movies,” a specific image pops into my head. I see my brother at 3 years old playing with a kid’s golf set. He is the perfect combination of toddler cuteness and clumsiness and he knocks himself in the head with a plastic golf club and tumbles to the ground.
The association is unique and personal, but the experience is not. My guess is that many others have already started to think about their own favorite moments from their family’s home movies.
My work this summer as a Jr. Fellow in the Library’s Moving Image Section has focused on home movies, specifically films, from the Prelinger Collection. There are approximately 500 home movies in this collection and the films document people, communities, and “everyday life” through moving images, providing significant contributions to cultural heritage and understanding, as one of the most authentic purveyors of information about the past.

The Library of Congress acquired the Prelinger Collection in 2002. As a prolific collector, Rick Prelinger is still actively collecting materials for his archives, acquiring films from a variety of sources, including donors and individual dealers. With the exception of donations, information about acquisitions is often lost and removed from their original context. In many cases, films are not labeled with any documentation at all. Part of my job was to match films that belong together by comparing dates, locations, subjects, and handwriting.
Working with home movies that are separated by so much time and space quickly becomes complicated. As amateur films, the identity of the people depicted is often a mystery. Moving images have the power to reanimate people who lived and died decades ago, yet they remain at a frustrating distance. They do not make a sound, as most home movies shot on film are silent.
It is a puzzle that can only be solved with a combination of investigation, deduction, and acceptance of the fact that you will never know all the answers – but you can come pretty close. In any case, a small bit of context can entirely change how a film is read and described.
Case study: Jack Levy Family Collection
Consider the following collection description:
This amateur movie collection was originally shot by and for the Jack Levy family, who derived their fortunes from a family business that produced Levy’s Jewish Rye Bread. The films came from a man on Long Island who had been the elevator operator in the building where the Levys lived. He saw the films discarded in a corridor and asked for them. He sold them to Rick Prelinger in 1985.
As a collector, Prelinger would have no reason to doubt this story. The films primarily show a couple from New York taking transatlantic trips in the 1930’s. Their wealth is evident not only from their frequent travels at the height of the Great Depression, but also from their expensive clothing and furs. Without further research, the description given by the elevator operator holds up.
When I began researching the Levy family (of rye bread fame) to find out exactly how Jack fit into the picture, I came up empty. Nowhere in their family tree could I find a Jack or similar name that was a plausible fit. I began to question who exactly Jack Levy was and whether he was in these films at all.
Lesson one: Peel Your Eyes
As mentioned above, home movies on film are usually silent. This makes visual information key to identification. Flags, landmarks, even clothing and cars can convey important information about the setting.
Lesson two: Beware of Assumptions

For the Levy family, second-guessing the collection description led me to an identification. However, I cannot conclusively say that there is no connection between this family and the Rye Levys, just that I have yet to find one. This lesson also applies to the content of films. It is easy to feel like you know someone when you are peeking into their life via their home movies, but there is a stark contrast being knowing about someone and actually knowing them. While travelling in Italy, for example, the Levys managed to capture amateur color footage of Hermann Göring at a rally in 1937. I will never know how they came to be at this event, what they knew about Nazism at the time or how they felt at the rally. These are very natural questions, but it is important to read the film as document and not draw sweeping conclusions about the family that filmed it.
Lesson 3: Let It Be
Don’t hesitate to reach out to reference librarians in the Moving Image Research Center or use Ask-A-Librarian if you have questions or are looking for a particular film from the Prelinger Collection or need information about any other film in our collections.
Comments (2)
This is great! Thank you! Perhaps you can make the unknown footage available to the public, with what you do know (maybe by location), to help gather more information?
Madeline’s work was very impressive. I echo her statement that much film floats into archives without much documentation, which is a significant problem but also an opportunity for archivists and scholars to do the research that might reanchor the film in time and place. One small correction for posterity — while I have done my bit to prevent films from being thrown into the trash, I recall no occasion in which I actually dove into dumpsters or reached into rubbish to save film.