Camping With The Barstows

Here's a remix I did of The Barstow Travel Adventure Films 'Family Camping Through 48 States parts 1 & 2' with kind permission from Dan Barstow.

Camping With The Barstows

Robbins Barstow was a pioneer of home movie making. He was given his first film camera in 1929 when he was just 10 years old and during his lifetime shot and edited over 100 films documenting his family's travels around the world.

His best know film Disneyland Dream (1956), about a trip to the newly opened Disneyland that the family had won, was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2008. An amazing achievement considering the registry, a list of over 500 films considered worth preserving for their cultural and artistic significance, is made up of mostly classic fiction (Annie Hall, The Wizard of Oz, Star Wars et al.) and the handful of other amateur works on the list include far more famous pieces like the Zapruder footage of JFK's assassination.

In 1957 Robbins and his wife Meg set out with their three children; Mary, David and Daniel on a mission to camp in every one of the 48 states of the USA over 5 summers. Camping with The Barstows is a re-edit of the films they made documenting the trip.

Robbins was an ardent disseminator of his work. In the early days he would hold screenings for friends and family where he would read out carefully timed narration to go with the silent pictures and later, once he had transferred the films to video and added his narration as voice-over, he got the films shown on public access television.

Camping with the Barstows is an attempt to gain wider recognition for Robbin's work, reworking it for a modern audience whilst keeping alive the spirit of wholesome adventure and wonderment shown by the originals. I'm also hoping to use it as a building block for developing a feature length piece. Music is by The Go! Team.