“Small gauge film is not larger than life, it’s part of life”: Six 8mm Films by JoAnn Elam

Although Elam made significant work on 16mm, she was in fact extremely dedicated to the 8mm format, making numerous small gauge diary films that display her fascination with natural beauty and manual labor. Filming her Logan Square neighbors, community events, gardens, pets and friends with her 8mm Carena Zoomex camera, Elam created films that are funny, surprising, political, and highly personal. Heavy on superimpositions, fast-paced editing, and disorienting camera movements, scholar and friend of Elam’s Chuck Kleinhans described these works as “avant-garde home movies.”²

In 1980, Elam and Kleinhans wrote their “Small Gauge Manifesto,” distributing it as a pamphlet at Chicago Filmmakers:

Small Gauge Manifesto

Small gauge film (regular 8 and Super 8) is low cost, technically accessible, and appropriate for small scale viewing.

Because it’s cheap and you can shoot a lot of film, filming can be flexible and spontaneous. Because the equipment is light and unobtrusive, the filming relationship can be immediate and personal.

The appropriate viewing situation is a small space with a small number of people. Therefore it invites films made for or with specific audiences. Often the filmmaker and/or people filmed are present at a screening. The filming and viewing events can be considered as part of the editing process. Editing decisions can be made before, during, and after filming and can incorporate feedback from an audience. Connections can be made between production and consumption, filmmaker and audience and subject matter.

Small gauge film is not larger than life, it’s part of life.³

Elam primarily projected her 8mm films in intimate settings, usually at a friend’s loft with a homemade meal or freshly baked cake. She also exhibited many of her 8mm films publicly at Chicago Filmmakers, an alternative exhibition space.

At the time Elam was shooting on 8mm, it was already considered to be an outdated format (superseded by the introduction of Super 8 in 1965), and cameras and film stock were relatively inexpensive. 8mm cameras and editing equipment were portable and enabled the filmmaker to work at home, which was a part of the appeal for an artist without institutional access and support like Elam. Though small, the 8mm experimental film scene at this time was extremely vibrant and active, and filmmakers such as Elam, Saul Levine, and Marjorie Keller developed a very particular aesthetic out of the constraints and possibilities afforded by the small gauge medium.

Elam shot over 200 8mm films during the 1970s and ‘80s, employing experimental shooting and editing strategies while documenting various aspects of her life. The six films that we selected for preservation are a representative sample of the styles and subjects in which Elam was interested.

Using multiple exposure and partially obscuring the lens, Elam turns a simple walk down a rural, wooded path into a mesmerizing journey seen through two wildly roaming eyes. 

Elam compresses and expands time, conjuring the feeling of hurling towards a distant destination by way of American back roads and the great warmth and calmness of arriving somewhere you belong. Elam’s notes indicate this film was screened as part of “Close to Home,” her series of “films which look at the ordinary arts embedded in everyday life.”⁵

Frenetically shot at a Fourth of July gathering (likely at the Chicago loft of film scholar B. Ruby Rich), 7/4/77 showcases Elam’s striking ability to use 8mm to capture intimate details and create a unique visual cadence. Also part of the “Close to Home” series.

Life goes on in the aftermath of the overwhelming snowfall of the famed Chicago Blizzard of 1979, as locals shovel out their Chevys and letter carriers heroically trudge towards mailboxes. With a lyrical sensibility, Elam’s thoughtful eye examines the quotidian struggle of dealing with the force of nature in an urban environment.

Labor, particularly the everyday types of labor usually taken for granted, is central to many of Elam’s films. She had a wonderful way of using her camera to take such acts of labor and expose something of their essence. Here, through mesmerizing use of in-camera editing, she does just that with the act of her husband, Joe, trimming a tree in their backyard.

Gardening was an essential part of Elam’s life; she not only tended to her own, quite impressive, backyard garden, she also attained the status of Master Gardener and then helped Chicago communities develop gardens and landscape neighborhoods. Elam’s garden features prominently in many of her films, and here is captured with devotion and blended beautifully, through use of double exposure, with other elements of her home.

Working from the 8mm reversal original workprints, Colorlab has photochemically preserved these six titles to 16mm polyester film. Many thanks to The Film Foundation, the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation, the National Film Preservation Foundation, and Colorlab for their help in preserving these films for the future!

If you are a programmer or curator interested in showing one of these films, please contact us.

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¹ Chuck Kleinhans, JoAnn Elam obituary, June 2009.

² Kleinhans, “JoAnn Elam’s Everyday People: A Process-Oriented Analysis of a Labor Documentary’s Archive,” presentation, Visible Evidence 18, New York University, August 2011: https://archive.org/stream/KleinhansWriting/JoAnn_Elam_s_Everyday_People_analyzing_djvu.txt.

³ First published in Viewpoint: Chicago Filmmakers Newsletter 5 (1980).

⁴ Scott McKenzie, Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures: A Critical Anthology (University of California Press, 2014), 87.

⁵ Chicago Filmmakers, “Cinema City,” Fall 1982.