BEDER FAMILY FILMS

 CONSERVATION & CAPTURE

Grant year: 2022

Grant category: Al Larvick National Grant

Grant recipient: Ted Beder

Collection title: Beder Family Films

Primary maker(s): Leonard and Renie Beder

Original format: Super 8 film, black and white, color, silent

Circa: 1953 to 1962

Collection size: Approximately 1,650ft, 18 reels of Super 8 film

Grant support: Cleaning and repair and digital capture of approximately 1650ft of the film collection

Digital capture format: Scanned at 2k resolution

Lab: Pro8mm

Status:  Conservation and digitization to be completed

Online Access: Coming soon

Creative Commons License: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/

GRANTEE

“I was born and raised in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles.  My early life was very much centered around kid neighborhood activities and traveling with my parents.  My parents made an annual winter trip to Mexico to visit friends that my Dad had made when he had gone to Mexico City College and when I turned 6 (1961), they started to bring me along.  They loved traveling so much that when I was 9 we moved to France and then Spain for 3 years returning back to our same home in the SFV when the ”trip” was over.  After college, I became a CPA doing a lot of work in the real estate industry and carrying on my parents tradition of traveling.  My wife and I have three children who are in various stages of graduating from and attending college.

I probably share the feeling with a lot of children of the 50s/60s who come across a cache of home movies.  I remember we had a projector and that my dad took movies but I never knew what happened to them until I stumbled on to them when I was cleaning out their house a couple of years ago.  It was like finding a buried chest and not knowing exactly what is in it until it is open.” ~ Ted Beder

FILMMAKER

“My parents used the 8mm camera from around 1952 when they got married until 1959 when I was 4 years old. My mother Renie’s family moved to LA from Toronto when she was 17 years old (1945) and lived in a duplex near Gower in Hollywood. My grandfather got a job at the LA Times printing plant.  My mom got a teaching degree and taught elementary school for one year, didn't like it and then worked at the May Company department store.   

My dad, Leonard, was born in South Bend, IN and moved with his family to LA when he was 14 (1941?) and lived in Boyle Heights and went to Roosevelt High School and then enlisted in the Navy.  His father owned a small grocery store in South Bend and sold real estate (houses) in Boyle Heights.  After the war, my dad traveled around Europe and then used his GI Bill benefits to go to college at Mexico City College (see Jack Kerouak "On the Road") where he got a degree in economics and picked up a lot of stories. 

I think my parents got married in 1952 and lived in the Mid-Wilshire area.  My mom continued to work at the May Company and my dad got a job with the Corps of Engineers.  They must have purchased the 8mm camera around that time because there are movies of a trip to Europe, trips to Mexico and some great movies of them getting delivery of a new stove showing the driver and the truck and bringing the stove into the house - probably around 1953.  It must have been a big event because my aunt and uncle are on the sidewalk watching the delivery.  Also some great movies of my dad picking my mom up from work and some of them around the house. 

In 1955, they shocked their families by picking up and moving all the way out to the San Fernando Valley.  I was born around that time and there are movies of SFV backyard barbecues, birthday parties, fishing trips and horseback rides. They went to Mexico every year and took a lot of movies of bullfights, beaches, etc.  They had a real connection to Mexico and went as often as they could - short trips to Tijuana and annual longer trips driving to Mazatlan where my dad had friends from Mexico City College.” Ted Beder

Collection

The collection consists of home movies taken from around 1953 to 1959. 

Many of the movies were from before Ted Beder was born and show his parent’s vacations to Mexico and Europe along with every day activities such as an appliance delivery, picking up from work, working at home, skiing and playing tennis. 

Once Ted was born, the focus seemed to turn to their son with movies of haircuts, birthday parties, horseback rides, fishing and the family dog.

The collection consists of 18 3” reels, one 5" reel and three 7” reels in 8mm format.