A dvd for happiness

While I was in South Africa, helping my mom pack up her house, we found an old 8mm film reel.  When we got to Cape Town I did some research and found a company that could convert the film to dvd.  There was no time to take it along there before I left to come home, but I left Mom with all the details so she could sort it out.


On Wednesday last week I got a copy of the dvd in the post. 

Oh My God. 

It was awesome.  It was the best gift my mother has ever given me.  It was footage taken in 1971 by my aunty Lynne's then husband, David Levin, on my maternal grandparent's farm in Whittlesea, near Queenstown in the Eastern Cape.  My grandfather and his second wife Iona (my grandmother, called Mama by us kids, died in 197?) moved to a little town called Komga, when the farm was bought out by the South African government in 197?.


But the film itself... a lot of it, which is only about 20 minutes long, shows the farm, gardens and animals - all in silence, with some spectacular, if grainy, arty shots of sunsets and trees blowing in the wind.  There is also some fantastic footage of the farm workers and their children dancing - and even though there is no sound, you can still pick up the beat!  Towards the end we start to see my people and this is the real WOW factor for me. 

My grandfather, Eric Filmer and my grandmother, Roslyn Filmer playing with their grandchildren.  My sister Lara when she was a 9 or 10 month old baby, cute as a button.  My dad messing about in the swimming pool, pretending to drown.  My aunty Dee with her first 2 children Christian and Andre.  My aunty Lynne with long, swishy 70's hair.  My mom, young and beautiful in a blue bikini, bouncing her baby in the swimming pool.


It is such a wonderful snapshot in time.  It filled me with so much joy to see my parents as young people (younger than I am now!) rather than as my parents. 

I love the silence of it, the happiness that seems to bubble along in the smiles, in the laughter and in the sunshine.  It may or may not have been the idyll that I see in it, but damn, it does make me happy!!!