In 1923, the Eastman Kodak Company began marketing its Cine-Kodak movie camera and 16mm film, and just as the Kodak Brownie camera had opened the world to a flood of snapshots, 16mm movie film and later the cheaper 8mm and Super 8 formats, brought the world of moviemaking out of the theaters and into people’s homes.
Home movies are often thought of in terms of their technical limitations—the unsteady cameras and the overexposed films—and limited in their subject matter. These are often overstated, since over the years there have been incredibly talented home movie makers who have filmed almost every imaginable event, but what home movies do best (or at least most often) is capture peoples’ travels, celebrations, and daily lives. Because of this, scenes that never would have been shot by newsreel cameramen or professional cinematographers were captured on film, and we now can view scenes of Philadelphia life that we wouldn’t be able to see in any other way.
