9.5mm from the American Continent part 1: Georgia

The Carl Leo Ottosen Collection consists of 13  9.5mm home movies, 16 purchased films, his camera, Baby projector, and cleaning and splicing kit–

Carl Ottosen lived from 1902-1991. His home movies were shot primarily in Denmark around 1928-1930 and depict Carl’s family–parents, uncles, aunts, & cousins.  He emigrated from Copenhagen, Denmark, on September 26, 1923, arriving in New York City on October 9, 1923 on the ship “The United States” of the Scandinavian-American Shipping Line. The ship’s manifest is online at the Ellis Island website. On the ship’s manifest, to questions of whether he was a “polygamist”, an “anarchist” or was “deformed or crippled”, Carl answered NO. He is noted as being in good health, 5 feet 8 inches tall, with blonde hair and gray eyes. He paid part of his fare by working as kitchen staff, peeling potatoes. His initial destination was Chicago, where his sponsor uncle lived, and some of the purchased films we preserve still have their original price stickers from Chicago’s gigantic department store, “The Fair”; they cost 50¢ each, or you could get 12 for $5.49. Carl was a journeyman tool and die maker, worked in Chicago and New York, and traveled by ship frequently between the U.S. and Denmark. He met his wife on one of these Atlantic trips.

A listing of the Ottosen film titles and viewable home movies is on our website:

https://bmac.libs.uga.edu/pawtucket2/index.php/Detail/collections/168

Colorlab transferred the home movies for us in 2005. We have scanned the 1928 instruction manual for Ottosen’s camera and made it available through the Media History Digital Library and the Internet Archive websites. It is viewable at:

https://archive.org/details/pathex-instruction-manual/mode/