The Shaffer Archive

CONSERVATION & CAPTURE

Grant year: 2023

Grant category: Al Larvick National Grant

Grant recipient: Deborah Shaffer

Collection title: The Shaffer Archive

Primary maker(s): Theodore Lloyd Shaffer

Original format: 16mm, black and white, silent

Circa: Late 1923-1942

Collection size: 2 reels equaling approximately 1550 feet

Grant support: Cleaning and repair and digital capture of the entire film-based collection

Digital capture format: Scan to 4K resolution

Lab: Preserve South

Status: Conservation and digitization completed

Online Access: Coming soon

Creative Commons License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

GRANTEE

Academy Award winning filmmaker Deborah Shaffer began making social issue documentaries as a member of the Newsreel collective the ‘70’s. She co-founded Pandora Films, one of the first women’s film companies, which produced several shorts, including How About You? and Chris and Bernie. Her first feature documentary, The Wobblies, which premiered at the New York Film Festival in 1979, was recently added to the National Film Registry. During the 80’s Shaffer focused on human rights in Central and Latin America, directing many films including Witness to War: Dr. Charlie Clements which won the Academy Award for Short Documentary in 1985, and Fire From the Mountain and Dance of Hope which both played at Sundance. Shaffer directed one of the first post 9/11 films, From the Ashes: 10 Artists followed by From the Ashes: Epilogue, which premiered at the Sundance and Tribeca. She is also the Executive Producer of the Academy Award-nominated short Asylum, and has directed acclaimed public television programs on women and the arts. She co-directed and produced To Be Heard, which won awards at numerous festivals, including the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize at the inaugural DOC NYC. Her 2019 film, Queen of Hearts: Audrey Flack premiered at DOC NYC and won other festival awards.

Shaffer had a long career as a film editor, working on television and independent documentaries including the Academy-Award nominated El Salvador: Another Vietnam. She has also Executive Produced and mentored many independent documentaries including Thunder in Guyana, Very Semi Serious, The Bengali and several documentaries currently in production. She has been a passionate collaborator and mentor to countless students and emerging filmmakers. Shaffer has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Irene Diamond Lifetime Achievement Award by the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, and is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Shaffer was recently awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by DOC NYC.

Currently Shaffer is Producing the recently NEH-funded documentary My Underground Mother, and is developing several new projects.  www.deborahshaffer.com

filmmaker

Theodore Lloyd Shaffer (1893-1954) was behind the camera as a father and family man, recording summer vacations, birthday parties, holidays, and winter outings with his family of 4 children, both on the Jersey Shore and in Philadelphia and Montclair, NJ where the family lived.

His family was of German and Scottish descent, and migrated to the Midwest in the mid-1800’s. TL, as he was known, became a schoolteacher in a one-room schoolhouse in Fairbury, Nebraska for 5 years before World War I. After serving in the Army, he became a salesman for the Congoleum Nairn company and moved to Philadelphia in 1923, eventually  becoming a Vice-President. He died of a heart attack at age 61, in 1954.

collection

“The Shaffer Archive consists of 43 minutes of black and white 16mm footage, originally shot on 3 minute reels. Most of the footage was shot by my grandfather between 1923 and 1939, with a few final minutes in 1942, and depicts repeated family celebrations. The first few shots of the reel depict my grandfather, Theodore Lloyd (known as TL) Shaffer, with his business colleagues. Most of the subsequent footage beginning in 1923, with blocks spelling out my father’s name and age (2-1/2), was shot over repeated summers at the Jersey Shore. I believe the family rented (or possibly owned) a large beachfront cottage near Atlantic City. In subsequent scenes and years, first my aunt Franna appears (born in 1924) and then my uncle Walter (1925). Year after year, there are playful moments on the beach, pony rides, pets, children’s birthday parties, May Day celebrations, a wedding, the youngest child’s - uncle David’s - christening, an especially beautiful indoor segment of my grandmother Ethel Watts Shaffer teaching my aunt Franna to serve tea properly, and some winter scenes of sledding (those were shot at the family’s home in Montclair I believe.) The most poignant material for me are the last few minutes, shot in 1942, at the farm the family had bought in Ringoes, NJ in the mid-30’s. My father and my uncle Walter are in their Navy uniforms, about to depart for service in WW II. They are clowning around with their sister and younger brother, and my mother who appears on the scene for the first time. She and my father never let go of each other’s hands, and are kissing in between shots of the group clowning around for the camera. My grandmother Ethel Watts Shaffer is in the scene too, obviously proud of her boisterous children.” ~ Deborah Shaffer