SCHENECTADY — Antonio Ferrera paints with video.

Local filmmaker Antonio Ferrera is crafting a picture of Schenectady through interviews and clips culled from home videos he is soliciting.
Watch Video»

He’s crafting a picture of Schenectady through snippets — a high school graduate leaping for joy; a kindergartner sobbing on the first day of school. From pieces of interviews and clips culled from home videos, he will eventually create a documentary about the city, its surrounding towns, and all the people who live here.

But a crucial ingredient is missing. He needs more home videos.

When he began work in May, he hoped to finish the film in time for SACC-TV’s annual Electric City Film Festival, held Oct. 23. However, only a few residents opened their lives to him, giving him very little to work with. He’s now gone to churches and ethnic celebrations, restaurants and bars, trying to persuade people to lend their past to the silver screen.

“I just need that content,” he said. “The more, the better the picture we can start to get glimpses of.”

He tells residents that he’ll take anything they’ve ever recorded. The quality of the recording doesn’t matter.

“You can give me one scene. You can give me a tape and say, ‘I have no idea what’s on this — you figure it out.’ Anything,” he said.

The only caveat: It must involve Schenectady County residents.

“If it’s happened in Schenectady, it’s a bonus,” he said.

SACC-TV sent out a press release asking for videos of picnics, parties, sporting events, rights of passage and “kids being kids.” But Ferrera said he’s interested in any moment that anyone thought was important enough to get on video — even the shot of an infant’s first meal of solid food.

“All our lives are sacred, beautiful things. You look at that kid eating — you wanted to remember that,” he said. “In Italian, the word record means ‘remember.’ When you press that button, you’ve decided to remember something.”

And he wants to see it.

With so few videos coming in now, he’s preparing for a difficult editing process before the October festival.

“It’s impossible. How can you tell the story of the city in just two months?” he said. “I’ll be showing people what I’ve discovered so far. This is going to be purely a work in progress.”

After the festival, he plans to give out 100 video cameras to select individuals who will simply film their lives. Several cameras will be given to students at Schenectady High School. He’ll also film viewers during the festival.

“So people’s opinions about what they see and what they hope for more of will be included in the film,” he said.

He doesn’t plan to hide the fact that this documentary wasn’t easy to make.

“Part of the story is failing and trying to figure out how to do it,” he said.

But he still thinks he’s chosen the right approach.

“I think it would be really beautiful,” he said. “What’s beautiful about it is home videos have no pretenses. You’ll have a black barbecue and a Chinese barbecue and you’ll see the culture you thought was so different isn’t, really.”

Ferrera was born in Italy but grew up in Schenectady. He most recently finished an HBO documentary about The Gates, an unusual art show in which avant-garde artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude hung huge orange panels of cloth in New York City’s Central Park during the winter of 2005.