Ernest Beane Home Movies and other African American Amateur Films

Rick Moss is chief curator of the African American Museum and Library at Oakland. Film archivist Pamela Jean Vadakan coordinates the California Audiovisual Preservation Project and has organized Home Movie Day in the East Bay since 2007. Marcus Shelby is an award-winning composer, arranger, educator, social activist, and bassist working in San Francisco. His credits include original scoring for film, theater, and ballet as well as jazz composition for his own groups, the fifteen-piece Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra and the Marcus Shelby Hot 7.

To commemorate Home Movie Day, a worldwide celebration of amateur films and filmmaking, we present a compilation of recently discovered rare home movies by Pullman porter Ernest Beane, with an original score by Marcus Shelby. Beane was committed to his craft, investing in both 16mm and 8mm equipment, and to his community-he took his camera on the town and on the train and shot folks wherever he went. From his block on Ashby Avenue in Berkeley to Salt Lake City and New York, Beane's intimate portraits of his family, neighbors, and fellow porters show people embracing life with exuberance and pride-smiling, jitterbugging, walking the block in their Sunday best, picking spring flowers, or sipping drinks in the backyard.

Click here for more information on Home Movie Day. This year the Oakland Museum of California will host Home Movie Day on Friday October 26.

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