THE EYES OF MEMORY
Film Review
Cinema Sixteen was commissioned to produce this film in 1976 for the Centennial celebration of the City of Burlington. At the time there were only two film producers in town and we won the competition!
John Lawrence Reynolds was our writer and Carol Anne Thomson was sound recordist. I did the shooting, directing and producing.
The budget was about $7500 as I remember, and it turned out to be the most significant event marking the anniversary. We shot the film with a Bolex 16mm camera and a reel-to-reel Narga recorder. Of all the “stars” in the film, probably the only ones still living are the kids in the Lowville United Church choir!
The narrator on the film was David Sovereign, a fellow I went to public school with. His Dad owned a dairy farm across from where the Mapleview Mall now stands and when I heard him as an announcer on the local Belleville radio station I knew we had our man.
The film took a year to shoot and produce and the premiere showing was at the then new Burlington Public Library.
We re-mastered the production a couple of years ago, working from a fairly clean 16mm release print I had squirrelled away. Every scene required colour correction but it came back quite well considering the vintage.
We offer DVD’s for sale on the site and if you wonder what Burlington looked like in the mid-70’s here’s your chance. It’s truly a step back in time compared with the Burlington of today. It was made at a time when the seniors of the day could recall their younger years on the family farm, at a time when farming was about the most important local occupation. The days of water power driving local industry were long gone yet you will see two remaining examples in this film; a subject I found as fascinating then as I do today.