Chandler Family Archive

CONSERVATION & CAPTURE

Grant year: 2023

Grant category: Al Larvick National Grant

Grant recipient: Todd Chandler

Collection title: Chandler Family Archive

Primary maker(s): Louis Chandler, Robert Chandler

Original format: 8mm, black and white, color, silent, VCR tapes, color, sound

Circa: 1947-1990

Collection size: 79 film reels, 12 videotapes

Grant support: Cleaning and repair and digital capture of approximately 1000-1200 feet of the film-based portion of the collection

Digital capture format: 2k resolution scan

Lab: Pro8mm

Status: Conservation and digitization completed

Online Access: Coming soon

Creative Commons License: Coming soon

grantee

Todd Chandler is a filmmaker, artist, and educator whose work explores American rituals, landscapes, and systems of power. His films and installations have been featured at True/False, IDFA, Doclisboa, the Hammer Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and Mass MoCA. His most recent documentary, Bulletproof, screened at over two dozen festivals worldwide, and was called “dreamlike and startling,” by the New York Times and “a quiet gut punch of a film,” by the Guardian. His work has been supported by the Sundance Institute, Field of Vision, International Documentary Association, Doc Society, and ITVS, among others. He was one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film, a fellow at the Sundance Non-Fiction Director’s Residency, and a Points North Fellow. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Creative Capital award, and the Hot Docs International Emerging Filmmaker award. 

He teaches in the Department of Film and Media Arts at Temple University.

filmmakerS

Louis Chandler (1911-1995) was an avid photographer and home-movie-maker, as was his son Robert Chandler (1945-2012).

Between the late 1940’s and the mid-1960’s Louis documented his family life on 8mm motion picture film at home in Maine and Massachusetts as well as on trips around the United States and Europe.

Robert Chandler documented his family on 35mm slide film and VHS analog video tape in in the 1980’s, both at home in Massachusetts and on trips around the United States.

“My family are Ashkenazi Jews who came to the United States from Kiselin, Poland in 1907. My great grandfather Nathan Chandler and great grandmother Rose Chandler gave birth to my grandfather, Louis Chandler in 1911. Lou later married my grandmother Miriam Chandler. They moved from Old Orchard Beach, Maine, to Newton, Massachusetts where my grandfather became a lawyer. Together they had three children, including my father, Robert. Lou was an avid photographer and home-movie enthusiast. He had dozens of stills cameras and a handful of 8mm and 16mm cameras as well. He documented. his family extensively from the late 40’s through the 60’s. My father, Robert, also a lawyer, moved to Wellesley, Massachusetts with my mother Terry. My father bought a cumbersome two-piece VHS camera/VCR combo in the early to mid eighties and began documenting, much like his father had done.” ~ Todd Chandler

COLLECTION

The Chandler Family Archive consists of 79 reels of 8mm film shot primarily between 1943 – 1961 and eight long play VHS tapes shot between 1981-1986.  

Most of the 8mm reels are in individual original boxes and approximately 65 of these boxes have handwritten descriptions of the contents. There are four reels that are unboxed and contain no information. Based on the descriptions most of the material was filmed at the family’s homes in Massachusetts and Old Orchard Beach, Maine,-- the latter being where the Louis’ father, Nathan Chandler settled after immigrating from Kisilin, Poland (now Ukraine) in 1907. 

Footage includes the family celebrating Jewish holidays, first days of school for the children, birthday parties, summers at Old Orchard Beach, Maine, trips to Europe, California, Las Vegas, and Hawaii. There are at least several notable sections from the 1940’s that feature four generations of the family, including Robert Chandler (1945-2012), Louis Chandler (1911-1995), Nathan Chandler (1890-1966), and Mordechai Tabakhendler Seigal (1866-1949), Nathan’s father who came over from Poland in 1923 to join his son. 

The VHS tapes were shot primarily by Robert Chandler on a Panasonic Omnivision VHS camera. He documented his family at home in Massachusetts, Jewish Holidays, and on trips throughout the United States.