All-Is-Well

Directed by Rick Prelinger

All-Is-Well collects ordinary adventures remembered only because they survive in home movies. Against a backdrop of distant news events, kids stampede for Easter eggs; horses run together; families read pulps and shoot craps; cooks fry; tin-can tourists work hard at leisure; people pose, clown and drink, pull back the husks of sweet corn. For them and for us, remaking the ephemeral gesture is both a small pleasure and an act of survival. The home movie segments used in the film date from 1930 to 1969, the period in which the near-infinite and mostly-unseen archive of home movies that awaits our attention was born.