My name is Daniele Carrer, and I have a collection of more than 1000 8 mm and super 8 films that I bought around the world and which are fully viewable on my YouTube channel.
I have always been in love with contemporary history and, for this reason, I know that the historical footage shot by regular directors has been always strongly influenced by politics. It was a very different world back in the 20th century, even in the democratic countries.
The history of the 50s, 60s and 70s, even in Northern America and Western Europe, was told by great journalists and great directors, but their words were always addressed by the society around them. Back then they didn’t have a complete freedom of expression like we have today when we can say what we want and make it available to the whole world thanks to the internet.
The legacy of amateur filmmakers
When the filmmaker dies, most home movies are thrown away. The mission of this site is to prevent this from happening.
The only way to do this is by working professionally and sharing information. I built a laboratory made up of expensive equipment, and I have spent years of my life working on software restoration of footage. I have published more than a thousand historical videos of my collection on a YouTube channel that has millions of views, and I have written dozens of pages on this website explaining everything I know about 8mm and super 8 films.
The quality of my digitizations can be explained not only by my words, but by this video:
Talking about:
- sharing information
- the importance of safeguarding history that otherwise would be lost
- how technology is a powerful tool to do all this
This site and others that I have published, together with my podcasts, the books I have written and the millions of views of my YouTube channel, are proof that all this is possible.
The historical importance of super 8 and 8 mm films
The video above is part of my private collection. It was shot in super 8 by a Spanish filmmaker travelling England in 1974.
It shows footage of minor cities of the country. Apart from that, there's nothing you can watch of those places in that period; at least if there is, it won't be accessible on the internet.
Without my effort—the money I spent to buy the film and the time it took me to restore it—those little pieces of history portrayed on the footage would be lost forever.
This is what gives me the strength to save more films every day.
Until the 1970s, in all of Western Europe there were only a few television channels. In my country, Italy, there were only two, and one in 1000 families could afford a camera.
This means that the real history of those years was caught only by a few amateur directors who recorded their footage on super 8 and 8 mm films, and less frequently on 16 mm. There are no shots of most of the places around Europe, and the rare ones that do exist risk being lost without projects like mine.
Our past is not just made up of great events. It can be just as worthily told by the videos of the Christmas lunches and by those of the people who walked to a market in the 1970s in much less fashionable clothes than people wear today.
My goal is to preserve that part of history, to make it watchable by the future generations when we won’t be here anymore to tell what world it used to be.
Daniele Carrer
THE LAB IS BASED IN ITALY AND OFFERS FREE RETURN DELIVERY IN ALL THE EUROPEAN UNION
The price to digitize and restore your 8 mm, super 8 and 16 mm films in my laboratory is always 4 euros per minute of footage, regardless of the format or the fact that they are mute or sound.
If you want me to work on your home movies, please contact me with this form: