HEAVY LITTLE OBJECTS

#272 :: Bell & Howell "Filmo" Double-Run Eight

Dead tech challenges your understanding of the world. Heft a little 2-pound slab of 1940 equipment for capturing moving images, and close your eyes. Wind its still-smooth clockwork motor with a few pumps of the stiff, fat chrome key on its side. Feel its weight - You're standing in a place where the internet and spy satellites cannot reach, where no pager or cellphone can splinter this moment. Your leather shoes have smooth soles, wingtip designs that peek out from beneath cuffed gabardine slacks. Chanel No. 5 wafts up from the woman on the blanket beside you, mingled with the smoke from her Camel and the tang of the picnic lunch you've brought to this hillside overlooking the orange groves and cattle ranches of the San Fernando Valley. Rocketdyne has not begun pouring carcinogens into the groundwater or filling the air with radiation because it does not exist. The atomic bomb does not exist, nor does the P-51 Mustang warplane. It's quiet, but for the ticking of your Chrysler Airflow's cooling motor. Aim the camera at her. You already set the aperture at f5.6 after dialing the enameled chrome exposure guide to "Average Subjects - Winter - Hazy - 10-to-12 a.m. / 12-to-2 p.m." Put your finger on the little brass shutter release stud, flip it to hear the 8mm film whirring through the gate, then stop with a solid "clunk". Now: open your eyes.

It's no bigger than most camcorders. It's made entirely of dense, rough-enameled metal and chrome, though. It is heavy.