Original subtitles

(Bolex camera clicking)

(relaxing piano music)

(film reel flapping in wind)

(birds chirping)

Alyssa: I grew up with video cameras,

always wanting to tell stories and make movies.

But it wasn't until I was in film school

that I touched actual film.

(film reel flapping in wind)

At the time I had no idea that there was a long,

lost family legacy waiting to be uncovered,

a treasure trove going all the way back

to the early days of film.

(upbeat piano music)

It all started at my grandfather, Emil's memorial.

(clock ticking)

I never knew my grandfather well.

He lived across the country from me

and he had a strained relationship with my father.

So when I went to his memorial,

it was like I was getting to know him for the first time.

(clock ticking)

My grandfather, Emil was a bit of a pack rat.

So after he died there was just an enormous amount

to go through.

(relaxing piano music)

And that's when I discovered

that he saved an entire archive of his father,

my great-grandfather, Jacques,

and Jacques was some kind of forgotten camera inventor.

(playful upbeat music)

I spent the weekend in the attic,

reading some articles Jacques wrote about cameras

of the future and camera automation.

He seemed very ahead of his time.

It was almost like he was envisioning the kind

of technology that we all have today.

(relaxing violin music)

I had been going through cameras all weekend,

but one was different from the others.

It was wrapped up,

kind of like a present.

(paper rustling)

I knew it was important

but I didn't yet know how important the Bolex was.

(upbeat guitar music)

From iconic avant-garde filmmakers like Maya Deren

in the 1940s,

to artists like Andy Warhol.

Just, you don't have to do anything.

Alyssa: Or filmmakers like Steven Spielberg in the 1960s,

or Peter Jackson and Spike Lee in the '80s.

For maybe two generations of people who grew up

in the '50, '60, '70s,

the Bolex was the gateway

and their dreams were attached to that camera.

Bolex Reflex, it was like I died and went to heaven.

We had to stop frame and wind the film back there,

you could double expose on it.

Basically, it was a box of tricks.

(Bolex Paillard clicking)

(upbeat instrumental music)

They're nice and light and you can do a lot

of camera moves with them.

Barbara: This is a versatile little beast.

As soon as I had it I realized I could be a filmmaker.

(film reel rolling)

Alyssa: Okay.

I made my first movie when I was 12.

(girls screaming hysterically)

If you could even call it a movie.

What did I ever do to you for you to treat me like this?

(whistling zooming)

Alyssa: Somewhere along the way it became my life.

Wee.

Again. Again.

So I couldn't but wonder

how I never knew the story of my great-grandfather,

Jacques, and his Bolex invention.

Was it because of the rift between my father

and his father, Emil?

He was very volatile

and I think that the reason was tension.

He was very, very tense.

My dad was not a confider,

just so many things he did that we knew nothing about

and had to reconstruct.

We've had to reconstruct because,

partly 'cause he never told us,

and partly because we rarely asked him stuff.

He wasn't a person to talk about the past.

Alyssa: Do you think that's one reason

why he kept all of the stuff,

but didn't look at it or tell anyone it was there?

I think that's part of it,

yeah, definitely.

I think he was somebody who had demons

and just didn't want to face them.

(people chatting)

Alyssa: Whatever the truth was,

it was too late to ask Emil any questions.

So it became my quest to uncover the truth

about my family and the Bolex,

using the artifacts my grandfather

and great-grandfather left behind.

(relaxing piano music)

I had always thought I was the only filmmaker in the family,

but we found reels and reels of films.

I was thinking about the titles,

that most of them were home movies.

(film reel rolling)

But the films were brittle and some were warped

and a lot of them spelled a vinegar

which meant they were rotting.

(film projector clicking)

I knew that Jacques invented the Bolex in Switzerland.

So I contacted the Cinematheque Swiss

and I told them about our discovery and they were ecstatic.

Apparently Jacques was known

as an early filmmaker in Switzerland,

or even a film pioneer.

And there were even lists of his lost films.

So we shipped them off,

not knowing if it was too late to save them.

Jacques's films seemed like the closest I would ever get

to actually meeting him.

But now it was looking like maybe even

those were lost to time.

But I wasn't ready to give up.

(upbeat playful instrumental music)

I was consumed by the idea that maybe it wasn't too late

to get to know Jacques.

There were boxes of documents and photographs.

Everything was a challenge because they were

in several languages.

Jacques went by three different last names.

And a lot of the material was quite technical.

And then there were the gaps,

months and years missing.

I knew that I had to get serious

if I was going to uncover Jacques's story.

So I quit my job and I moved into my mother's house.

(Alyssa groaning)

All my friends were climbing career ladders

and getting married,

and I was single, broke,

and obsessed with the story of a man I never met.

Hi.

You spotted me and the Bolex.

Hi.

It's good to see you.

(laughing)

So we're gonna take a ferry.

Roland Cosandey is a film historian

who has been researching Jacques

and his films for decades.

I contacted him to let him know what we had found.

(relaxing piano music)

I think this is one of the most important gifts

in the search about Boolsky.

And this is really a treasure.

People think an historian is somebody who brings answers.

I'm convinced that an historian is somebody

who brings questions.

That means that you are working on something with gaps.

You are trying to find out where,

if one can fill up that those gaps.

You have your questions.

I have mine.

But in a certain way we are confronted

with the same difficulties.

Alyssa: My great-grandfather had taken thousands

of photographs and dozens of hours of films in his lifetime.

So we started with where Jacques came from?

My dad and his siblings were kids when Jacques died.

They didn't know much,

but they told me some basics.

(relaxing instrumental music)

Jacques was born in Kiev in 1895.

His given name was Yakov Bogopolsky.

He and his three brothers and one sister grew up

in Astrakhan, Russia.

His family were Jewish intellectuals with medical

and engineering degrees.

And his mother was a concert pianist.

What we do know about the family is

that they were all scientifically oriented.

It tells you that the family must have put enormous value

on that form of education.

And the kind of twist with Jacov is that he started going

off in his own tangent which was art.

(relaxing instrumental music)

Alyssa: Around 1910, when he was 15 years old,

Jacques launched a photography business in his neighborhood.

Roland: How old is he?

Alyssa: There?

Roland: Yes.

Alyssa: To me he looks maybe 16.

Roland: Boolsky hunting.

(Alyssa chuckling)

Here, as Nansen the Explorer.

Photographs are lies,

we know that but we can put up stories.

Alyssa: Are films lies too?

Roland: Of course.

Alyssa: So if you can't find truth from images,

films or documents,

where do you find?

Roland: In between, I don't know where

that in between lays but there is an in between.

(relaxing upbeat instrumental music)

Alyssa: Jacques seemed very at ease

in front of the camera.

Even early on he seemed to explore himself

through his own art,

especially his own image.

He even had an entire photo album of selfies.

When it was time for Jacques to find a profession,

he decided he wanted to be a doctor.

But at the time,

there were quotas in effect for Jews

to study medicine in Russia.

In 1913, when he was 17 years old,

Jacques left his family behind to study medicine

in Geneva, Switzerland.

He enrolled in medical and art school

and he supported himself by drawing portraits

of his professors.

He was intensely visual,

whether it was science or optics or engineering.

To him and made no,

there was no differentiation.

Alyssa: While in medical school,

one of his professors

was researching the peristaltic movements of the heart,

which at the time was a medical mystery.

The professor mentioned

that he wished he could record those movements on film.

And Jacques impulsively volunteered to build a movie camera

to do just that.

Six months later the camera was at success

and they were on the road doing lectures

about it at universities.

And 10 years later he was inventing the Bolex.

The model that I had found

in the attic was almost a 100 years old,

but it was a lot different than the early cameras

I'd been learning about in film school.

I wanted to know more about what he was trying to do

and what kind of cameras he grew up with?

Well, in the teens,

most cameras that were being used

were professional 35 millimeter movie cameras.

The professional cameras you could buy for like 250 or $300

which was a lot of money in those days.

(cameras clicking)

The difficulty with early amateur systems

for making films is the film stock itself

was extremely flammable, number one.

The skills that you needed

to get a good exposure were difficult.

And the equipment itself was large and bulky.

There definitely was a demand for films outside

of the studio atmosphere.

A lot of different companies saw an opportunity

at that time.

Alyssa: The Bolex must've been Jacques' solution

to these problems.

It was relatively lightweight

and I'd read that it was user-friendly.

But embarrassingly, I had never even loaded one before.

(winding clicking)

So I looked it up on YouTube.

(plastic clicking)

(birds chirping)

The Bolex was designed to be portable,

self-powered and quick to learn,

and had a turret for multiple lenses.

(upbeat guitar music)

It could be loaded anywhere,

even in the daylight.

It was durable and it could withstand extreme conditions

and temperatures that other cameras couldn't.

Being hand powered,

the Bolex could be taken anywhere around the world.

(birds chirping)

(camel grunting)

(Bolex clicking)

(Bolex squeaking)

I teach filmmaking at the new school.

I'll take the Bolex and put it down in front

of my students and tell them,

this is the Bolex.

It's made in Switzerland and it's the camera

that's just like the Swiss Army Knife.

(Bolex clicking)

Students now, they've grown up

in a completely digital environment

and there's a longing to have a medium

that has a physical presence to it.

Hopefully that means film will stick around.

When you think of how many different cameras have come

and gone and not endured as long.

You had VHS,

S-VHS,

little VHS-C, regular eight millimeter video,

then Hi8,

Mini DV,

now HD, it's probably going to go in the dustbin.

And this Bolex,

you put film in it

and it is still giving you this beautiful image.

(camera squeaking)

So now I think I'm gonna try to get some shots trembling

down the spiral staircase, double expose,

and double exposed it again and double expose it again.

(upbeat trumpet music)

(camera clicking)

The portability of the Bolex,

even now at almost 76,

I find this an exceedingly balanced camera.

For the Bolex you don't need a permit to shoot anywhere

because this was non-threatening.

Your great-grandfather, when he invented this,

he invented all the, quote,

tricks that Melies used in the very birth of cinema.

So I imagine that he was influenced by those films

and that he saw them.

When I began filmmaking I didn't have any money,

so I would teach women filmmaking in my studios.

And I would tell them that it's not only portable

but once it's in your hands,

you can use your body like a tripod.

Because you have wide hips,

so your center of balance is lower than men's

and you can swivel.

They could tilt.

They could use their core strength.

And I do not have to have my eye on the lens

because I have a 10 millimeter on

and everything is in focus.

You can take her to bed.

You can cradle her.

You can take her to the mountains.

(Bolex clicking)

Talking about this makes you wanna make another film

with the Bolex.

(Barbara chuckling)

So this is my film on the shelf.

(film reel wheel clanging)

Alyssa: Jonas Mekas has used the Bolex for decades

and is often referred to as the godfather

of American avant-garde cinema.

See, and there is the screen.

Alyssa: He helped define the way we use the movie camera

with his diary films.

(dramatic upbeat music)

From Andy Warhol and "The Velvet Underground",

to Lou Reed and John Lennon,

Jonas has been in the heart of the art scene

in New York City.

(clapperboard clicking)

Bolex is like a typewriter

and the video camera is like a pen,

like a pencil.

And just listen to the noise it makes.

(Bolex reel humming)

And you can change the noise.

(Bolex reel humming)

Oh, that's what 64 frames.

(dramatic music)

Bolex can do all that things that I need it.

That some cameras you can superimpose,

you can slow down,

but, for instance,

they are not so precise.

You cannot wind back exactly three frames,

and again, hit it back where you started.

I began filming in November, 1949.

That's when I got my first Bolex.

But I finished my first film only in '61.

You see, filming is one thing

and to make a film is another thing.

I kept a film diary.

(dramatic accordion music)

I consider myself in a way like anthropologist,

trying to catch essential moments of humanity,

today, around me.

(dramatic accordion music)

No matter what film you watch,

you get to know the filmmaker if you know

how to read images.

(Bolex camera clicking)

Alyssa: The Bolex story is getting bigger

and clearer to me.

But Jacques remained elusive.

Unexpectedly,

a package arrived from the Cinematheque.

Inside where the first batch of transfers

of Jacques's films.

And all of a sudden he went from a man

in a picture frame,

to motion.

(Bolex camera clicking)

(relaxing guitar music)

These were home movies from the 1920s and '30s

when Jacques was inventing the Bolex.

There were all these people

who I had no idea who they were or where he was filming.

Were these camera tests with his camera

or was he documenting his life like we do today?

Jonas Mekas said you could get to know a filmmaker

through their films if you know how to read their images.

But I don't know what that would mean in Jacques' case.

So I found my great-grandfather's films

that he shot over 40 years,

and I can't ask him any questions about it.

So he's kind of telling the story through his own footage

but it almost has to be my interpretation of it

because I don't know the story behind those films.

Maybe some of the facts you don't know,

but there may be feelings in the images

that speak to you,

and I think to follow that as the most important thing.

I think sometimes it's thought that you have

to kind of be true to the subject and all that.

That's a big weight,

a big load,

you're making a film about your great-grandfather.

Any film that you make comes out of yourself, you know.

But he'll probably speak to you through the film, some way.

You'll have a conversation with him

and that's a beautiful thing.

(relaxing piano music)

Alyssa: I wonder what it would be like to meet Jacques,

I mean, like really meet him in person?

(waves swishing gently)

Was Jacques a filmmaker

or was his interest just in making tools for others?

Why would Emil save all of this,

and yet, not talk about his father?

Did my grandfather, Emil,

secretly want his father's archive to be found?

(suitcase clicking)

I spent the week in the attic looking

for anything I may have missed the first time.

(clock ticking)

And then there was the journal.

(relaxing piano music)

Pages and pages of Jacques's own thoughts.

The journal was from his time in Switzerland,

starting just months before he released the first Bolex.

(Bolex camera clicking)

[Jacques Voiceover] August, one,

my journal allows me to stop in the daily cause of things

to go down into myself and to verify things

such as hopes,

if there is progress

and to correct as needed the goals of my existence.

And from time to time it's good

to see if the compass is working,

if the ship is actually sailing toward the goal.

(Bolex camera clicking)

(relaxing instrumental music)

Business, made a series of films on the Bolex.

This one is a marvel of clarity and value.

It is in fact the first impeccable film made with the Bolex.

Alyssa: His journal was almost like a treasure map.

He wrote about a precursor to the Bolex,

a 35 millimeter movie camera he invented

called the Cinegraph Bol.

I found the manuals for it in one of the boxes

but there was no camera there.

For some reason he didn't save one,

and he actually didn't save much from the 1920s

while living in Geneva.

I needed to walk the streets he walked

and to trace his steps.

I needed to go to Switzerland.

(airplane rumbling)

(relaxing piano music)

(Bolex camera clicking)

(bicycle bell ringing)

(birds chirping)

(Bolex camera clicking)

(knocking on wooden door)

Hi, (speaking in foreign language).

Michel: You say Jacques?

Alyssa: Jacques.

You say, Jacques.

Yeah, Jacques. Yes, okay.

Alyssa: Do you call him Boolsky,

Bosky or Bolsey?

Well, I don't know.

The first time I heard about him it was Bogopolsky.

And then afterwards Bolsky and then Bolsey,

or you say, Bolsey?

Alyssa: I say, Bolsey.

Wow.

Michel and his wife created the Auer and Ory Collection

which is one of the most important photography

collections in Switzerland.

And they even have an original Cinegraph Bol camera.

The inventors are not enough known.

I don't think he is as known as he should.

And the Bolex cameras

are the finest cinema cameras in Switzerland.

(relaxing upbeat playful music)

Alyssa: Wow.

Michel: Let's be surprised.

Alyssa: So when's the last time you used this?

I don't know. Never?

(Bolex camera clicking)

It's the automatic--

Cinegraph?

Bol Cinegraph Automatic, yes.

(Bolex camera clicking)

Apparently it works but I don't know how to stop it.

Alyssa: Jacques started developing the Cinegraph Bol

in the 19-teens.

So the first one was exactly the same as that

but it was hand cranked.

So you didn't have this motor,

this mechanism and you would have the crank here

and you would operate it like this.

Alyssa: It was 35 millimeter,

simple to use and included multiple functions.

The camera had an exposure guide,

shot both still and motion picture images,

and projected the film,

all within the same device.

And then you would put the film like this.

Who was using this camera?

Well, it's an amateur camera.

The publicity, the advertising would say,

you get a cine camera for the price

of a still camera.

Alyssa: Jacques brought the Cinegraph Bol

to market when 35 millimeter was the standard.

But in 1923,

Eastman Kodak released a new film format

for amateur filmmakers,

16 millimeter.

Michel showed me the remnants of the Bol company

that Jacques founded

with his business partner, Charles Haccius.

It's the Bol company.

And that was the stock of 1,000 Swiss francs.

Yeah.

And there were the bonds for the dividends, you know,

that they never cashed because there were never dividends

and never money made.

Alyssa: We know that for a fact?

You know that, yes.

I think he was too fast

and he was inventing too many things.

And as soon something was done,

he was working on something else.

(relaxing jazz music)

(ship horn blowing)

[Jacques Voiceover] In 1924, during my formal stay

in the US I was invited by George Eastman to visit.

In the 1920s Eastman Kodak was the dominant force

in motion picture film stock production.

And Kodak continued

to dominate the motion picture film stock field all

through that time period into the '20s and beyond.

[Jacques Voiceover] At that time,

Eastman had been obtaining direct positives

of inferior quality.

Incidentally, the same trouble was being experienced

by European manufacturers.

The film was brownish and milky.

While my chemist,

Mark (indistinct) and I had developed a process

for using a high quality brilliant direct positive.

Seeing the enthusiasm on the Eastman people,

I disclosed to them on the spot my secret formula.

The very next day,

Dr. Melies brought me into a no entrance room

and showed me the whole line of 16 millimeter cameras.

I received all the information on the standards,

dimensions and all other characteristics

of the entire line as compensation for my gift

of the reversal process.

When I mentioned that I might become their competitor

if they gave me all this data,

they replied, you're welcome.

(ship horn blowing)

On the boat returning to Switzerland,

I designed an automatic camera.

We tooled up immediately after and came up

with the first 16 millimeter fully automatic movie camera

under the name Bolex Model A.

It's compact, you can handhold it.

Everything is built in.

As you'll notice,

there's nothing that sticks out.

The finder doesn't stick out.

You don't have filters on the front.

You don't have all of this stuff.

I think the expression that you could use today

is it was user-friendly.

So yes, it's quite extraordinary.

It's also built like a tank,

which is lovely in the day disposable things made

out of plastic.

(relaxing jazz music)

[Jacques Voiceover] November 20, 1927.

Business, first Bolex camera

of the series as arrived a week ago.

Perfect, wasn't expecting this result from the first camera.

Much to do.

Patents flood my desk.

(water splashing)

(relaxing upbeat jazz music)

(dog barking)

Alyssa: Around the same time,

Jacques fell in love with his Swiss bookkeeper.

(Bolex camera clicking)

Her name is Maria but he called her Mariette.

(relaxing piano music)

She was young,

11 years his junior,

but they were madly in love.

(birds chirping)

[Jacques Voiceover] May 26, 1927,

the day was good.

Superb walk with Mariette in the afternoon.

(water trickling)

The rain was mixed with a bit of shy, indecisive sun.

Mariette is sweet in her new flower dress,

the color of a half crushed strawberry.

(Bolex camera clicking)

Alyssa: The problem was Jacques was still married

at the time with two young sons.

My grandfather, Emil,

and his older brother, Raphael.

Jacques was separated From his first wife, Sima,

but the Swiss courts wouldn't grant him a divorce.

And as he was getting ready to release the Bolex in 1927,

he was in the middle of a nasty separation.

Both of them were very young.

He was probably not even 20.

She was pregnant so they had to get married.

And both of them were kind of alone in Geneva.

They were separated from their families.

He was very focused on what he was doing, his inventions.

I mean, we know that he was inventing things

at a very young age and never stopped.

She was very quickly saddled with two small children.

I think they were maybe 20 months apart,

if that much.

It was really a marriage kind of set up for failure.

I know from a friend of family at the time that

my grandmother, Sima would be in the apartment,

standing on a chair yelling at the top of her lungs,

and not at the kids,

it would be a Jacques.

With the kids she would be doting

and just wonderful as she was with us later

on as grandchildren.

From the journal it appears that at times,

for months at a time,

that she would keep the kids from seeing their father.

Alyssa: In his journal,

Jacques didn't refer to Sima by name.

He called her by the name

of the street she lived on, Rue Verte.

At one time it had been their home together

but it had quickly become a bad word for him.

I walked down that street

to see my great-grandmother Sima's old apartment.

(Bolex camera clicking)

The street was oddly calm and quiet in contrast

to their stormy relationship.

All the buildings were

in shadow except number seven Rue Verte.

And a family of birds chirped happily on the railing.

(Zeppelin rumbling)

This is the only footage I found of my great-grandmother,

Sima, in Jacques's home movies.

(Zeppelin rumbling)

It must've been lonely for her living in Geneva,

watching her marriage crumble while raising two young sons,

and separated from her own family in Russia.

(Zeppelin rumbling)

[Jacques Voiceover] July 21, 1927.

Finally, a letter from father with a photo of the family.

Mamma's still the same with her gentle intelligent eyes.

Father, greatly aged.

Alyssa: Since the Russian Revolution in 1917,

Jacques was no longer a citizen of any country.

He repeatedly applied for citizenship for himself

and his Swiss-born children,

but was continually denied.

There is a Bolsky code in the history of the 20th Century.

What does it mean to be an immigrant without paper

and what is it to be a Jew?

(motorbike humming by)

The difficulties with passports crossing borders

were manifest.

(relaxing piano music)

[Jacques Voiceover] Decided with the board of directors

to lower the cost of Bol company,

so we can continue to live within our means.

Gaumont in England is interested in Bolex.

Awaiting to hear from Agfa,

late in responding.

Not a good sign.

Alyssa: Jacques and his financial partner,

Charles Haccius wanted to see the Bolex reach people

around the world.

But the Bol company was too small to mass produce a camera.

Similar to a tech startup today,

they needed an infusion of capital

and greater manufacturing capacity to scale their business.

(dramatic music)

Reporter: It was panic.

16 and 1/2 million shares of stock sold in a single day,

sold helpless, desperate,

at any price.

It was the forerunner of depression and crisis.

Alyssa: The economic collapse

following the stock market crash in 1929,

left Jacques with limited options.

(restless crowd shouting)

[Jacques Voiceover] Yesterday, we felt

the first bite of cold.

Crisis clamps down on the world.

(somber piano music)

(protestors protesting)

This huge downturn in the economy worldwide,

that was a really tough time

for even professional filmmaking.

So with the amateur market,

that was just like the end of the world.

Alyssa: That year, Jacques met with a Swiss music box

and gramophone company that was looking to diversify.

They were intrigued by Jacques's movie camera.

The company's name was Paillard.

[Jacques Voiceover] October 4, 1930.

Business, on the 1st of October

we signed the contracts with Paillard.

It is still very early.

I hope that

with them I can develop various inventions of cinema.

It's hard to abandon my role as captain

after great struggles,

but I take consolation in being able

to concentrate on my research.

(train clickety-clacking on track)

(relaxing piano music)

(Bolex camera clicking)

(birds chirping)

(lady speaking in foreign language)

(wind chimes jingling)

Alyssa: The main Paillard factory was

in a small village called Saint Croix in the Jura Mountains,

famous for its music boxes and mechanical music.

(music box chiming)

(music box ticking)

(music box bells pinging)

(speaking in foreign language)

(playful upbeat music)

(film reels flapping)

Alyssa: The movie camera industry was changing fast

and the Bolex model needed updating

to stay ahead of the competition.

Paillard was upset

that they couldn't mass produce the Bolex immediately.

They blamed Jacques for the delay,

accusing him of tricking them into buying the patents.

(machine ticking)

[Jacques Voiceover] December 25, 1930, Christmas day.

This past week set off the bomb.

Paillard are convinced today they were wrong

about making the Bolex deal.

I am outraged by the actions of these mountain men

and affirm with all my heart

that I never thought to trick them in any way.

For a week I have been deeply depressed

and I keep it hidden within.

How to make them understand their vulgar mistake?

Those beautiful dreams,

have they all drowned?

(somber piano music)

Alyssa: Jacques was contracted to stay

on as consulting engineer for five years.

But the excitement was short-lived as tensions grew

between Jacques and the Paillard company.

Once he went in contact with the Paillard people,

there are hints of antisemitism

in the way they talk about him in private letters.

That had to do

with the idea that he was a crook

because Jews are crooks, of course,

as everybody knows at that time.

Alyssa: During the years under contract with Paillard,

Jacques rarely wrote anything positive in his journal.

At the same time,

he was filming up a storm.

(relaxing percussion music)

Jacques even cat films in the early 1930s.

(water swishing)

Despite the struggles he faced,

he focused his camera on the good times.

He recorded the moments he wanted to remember

and wanted others to see.

[Jacques Voiceover] Mariette, we love as we did

from the first day.

(relaxing jazz music)

Alyssa: Around the same time,

he started developing film clubs.

(film reel flapping)

And although he wasn't trying to make big movies,

he seemed intrigued with Hollywood,

as evidenced by an early short film with gunfights

and cameos of himself and Mariette.

(upbeat playful piano music)

Jacques seemed restless to create.

I wonder if the film clubs came out of that,

a desire for community,

or maybe as a way to rekindle his passion for cinema?

(relaxing instrumental music)

We found a behind-the-scenes film

of Jacques directing in the 1930s.

His focus expanded to making educational films.

(tires skiing)

(swooping slip)

(man groaning)

But his films weren't for everyone.

(rock clanging)

The film about the writing

through ages is the more boring thing I had ever seen

since a long time when I came across.

And there are many, horses,

the film with horses, horse care.

It's also very boring.

Educational films are boring,

no, don't you think?

Alyssa: Jacques also experimented with animation

and made one of the first Swiss animation films ever.

(birds chirping)

(wings swishing)

It was a classic fable,

"The Cicada and the Ant".

It was about planning for the future and hard work.

(relaxing upbeat instrumental music)

(smooching kiss)

(upbeat classical music)

Narrator: When you go to your neighborhood theater

and see a good movie,

do you wish you could make movies

with that professional Hollywood touch of quality?

Well, here's good news.

With top grade home movie equipment

and some basic camera techniques,

your own movies can share the Hollywood excellence.

(waves swishing)

The Bolex was so deliciously versatile.

There had never been anything like this before.

Man: Boy, that Bolex film sure is great,

Bob, as clear as movies in a theater.

Man: Wait till you take a gander at this next one.

(racecourse bell ringing)

It was relatively inexpensive,

easy to use,

had enough features that you couldn't say,

we can't do that because the camera won't do it.

The camera would do it.

Narrator: Never before has there been a home movie camera

that even the beginner could use

to create professional movies.

You could do anything that you wanted to do

with a film camera,

with the Bolex and it was high quality, great lenses,

just the perfect package.

(upbeat jive music)

The Bolex had a great image stability.

It was a very democratic instrument

and the Bolex was a beautiful object

with the shiny chrome metal things.

And especially the ring of these three lenses.

That was filmmaking.

That camera in itself embodied it.

And I think I'm not the only one.

Do you wanna see the camera now?

Well, you mean,

watch the watcher? Oh yeah,

it's just terrific. You watch it

and it watches you.

(Susan chuckling)

Andy wanted to transform himself

from just being someone who was painting on canvas

or silk screening on canvas.

But not too much.

Gerard: Film made him feel liberated.

You could walk into a camera store

and you could get a Bolex movie camera.

It was readily available.

And it was a terrific camera to work with.

(Bolex camera clicking)

How come your camera doesn't make any noise?

The silent movies had a certain kind

of conceptual look to them that was very handy,

freewheeling, timid, anti-stylistic.

Little subtleties would happen in a film

that looked very static.

Any Buchanan, she was a girlfriend of mine,

and we put her in front of the camera and all of a sudden,

because of the lights,

it made her start tearing.

Her eyes, they looked like little jewels, surrealist jewels.

I thought maybe we could do a lot more

of these portraits with other people even.

And that's how the idea of the screen chest came about.

(relaxing rock music)

(upbeat playful music)

The Bolex has always been the filmmaker's friend.

It will help you interpret your ideas.

You can do stop frame.

Wind the film back there.

You could double expose on it.

If a cinematographer is a magician that's, yeah,

Bolex is the best box of tricks ever.

(shaker beans rustling)

There's a magic with cameras I found

that you could actually bring things to life,

and it was something that I discovered quite early on

in the great tradition of the Georges Melias.

What happens if I stop this and start it

and I just start experimented with it?

And I think the first film I made

was actually animating my action men,

articulating soldiers, perfect for animation,

bringing inanimate objects to life.

(Bolex camera clicking)

The camera that did everything.

(relaxing upbeat instrumental music)

I always got the feeling that it was actually invented by

or designed by a filmmaker for filmmakers.

(Bolex camera clicking)

Narrator: What is making it all possible?

Back to the Paillard plant for more answers.

Alyssa: The Bolex Model H was released just months

before Jacques's contract with Paillard was set to expire.

(relaxing piano music)

[Jacques Voiceover] Complete change of attitude.

Paillard asked me to become a consulting engineer

in all their branches.

The success of the new camera is the reason

for this change in attitude.

The Bolex

is a great success.

(papers flapping)

I am free.

My contract is up.

I feel unimpeded,

lighter of heart.

Paillard calls me,

asking to continue working together.

(relaxing piano music)

Alyssa: But he chose to go his own way.

(city ambience)

I went to Jacques's old apartment that he

and Mariette were living in in the 1930s.

(relaxing piano music)

I couldn't believe that Jacques never benefited

from the success of the Bolex.

It was like he planted a seed and walked away

while Paillard watered it and helped it grow.

(Bolex camera clicking)

I thought creating a camera like the Bolex was his goal

but now I'm not so sure what Jacques was looking for.

(relaxing somber piano music)

(relaxing upbeat instrumental music)

As the Bolex was beginning to expand around the world,

Jacques was working on flurry of new inventions.

[Jacques Voiceover] Cine-Fader, finished the first

series of 500.

Splicer, Monopod,

Room Projector, still waiting for the optical elements

to complete the model.

In the meantime,

trying to establish the manufacturer of a cigarette case,

lighter, pocket flashlight.

It turns out when you look at the letters

that his advisors were his two sons.

This was true even when they were teenagers.

He would write in a letter all the social stuff,

you know, hi,

how are you doing and so and so forth

and he would lay out a problem,

some technical problem.

So who did he turn to?

He turned to his teenage sons.

They were really a dynamic duo together.

One of them would answer on behalf of the two of them

and they would say, hi dad,

how are you doing?

I hope everything's okay.

Now, as to your problem with the shutter,

here's why we think this is happening.

Just because they always did thought experiments.

My dad was brilliant at this and his brother was too.

They could visualize stuff,

like a musician that can visualize a symphony

in his or her head and doesn't need to write it down.

And then it would just be,

there it was.

There was a solution and in the next letter says,

oh yeah, thanks.

I tried that and that seems to have worked quite well.

So there was always that kind of synergy.

(dramatic ominous instrumental music)

Narrator: 20 years ago ago, firing ceased.

20 years ago a rejoicing world saw then end

of its most terrible carnage.

Today, people are again plagued by unsound theories,

the desire for conquest.

Again, the world is offered the false idea

that might makes right.

(dramatic drum music)

Alyssa: From his journal,

it became clear that Jacques was worried

about the possibility of a Second World War.

[Jacques Voiceover] April 4, 1938,

gas mask, Cine Machine Gun,

got the first shots.

Great cinematic results on the first try.

Alyssa: Jacques began making films for war preparedness.

One film was,

"What To Do In Case of an Aerial Attack".

(dramatic ominous instrumental music)

You find a filmmaker who is not only interested

because he's commissioned to do films about aerial defense,

but who probably is afraid of what may happen

in the '30s because it was clear to many people.

(dramatic ominous music)

(soldier boots clomping in tandem)

Narrator: The responsibility lies

on the shoulders of one man.

By his latest act of naked aggression,

Hitler has committed a crime not only against Poland,

but against the whole human race.

[Jacques Voiceover] War and mobilization

have upset everything

(airplanes rumbling)

just when everything appeared to be going better.

(airplanes rumbling)

February 27, 1939.

Parents, no news for months.

It is said that those who receive letters

from abroad are suspected.

Don't dare write to them.

(dramatic droning humming)

September 20, 1939.

Parents, no news for weeks.

Soon it will be months.

Assume that the sensor does not allow

for any correspondents.

What has become of them?

What becomes of my brothers in the war?

(somber piano music)

My immediate goal is naturalization for the boys

and for me.

Alyssa: After over 20 years living in Switzerland,

Jacques was still a citizen of no country,

as were his children.

(somber piano music)

[Jacques Voiceover] The government has finally deigned

to notice my existence.

They refuse my residency permit as if I were one

who has broken the law

like a common criminal.

Alyssa: World War II changed everything.

His sons who were military age were finally made citizens.

And then they were drafted into the military

that same month.

(dramatic somber instrumental music)

But Jacques was still a citizen of no country.

So he decided to leave Switzerland behind

and find a new home.

[Jacques Voiceover] July 16, 1939.

Just received a visa for the United States.

Again, I'll find some roots in a soil.

Narrator: This is a free land

in which we have a right to work anywhere,

earn our living in the job we can do best.

We call it freedom of opportunity.

(upbeat instrumental music)

It's clear from his writing,

he put off leaving Switzerland to the last possible minute.

He gets one of the last transports going out of Europe

to before the war breaks out,

ends up in New York Harbor and he was essentially a refugee

and he didn't have a lot of money.

I mean, here's a guy who doesn't speak English.

And in two or three years he's got a company

that's producing photographic equipment

for the US Military that's being installed

on airplanes and being used in the war.

(rapid Gatling gun fire)

(airplane rumbling)

(airplane exploding)

(rapid Gatling gun fire)

Alyssa: Soon, he was inventing line after line

of cameras for the war effort

and was granted us citizenship.

After 20 years as a man without a country,

he finally had a home,

but he was alone.

For almost 15 years,

Jacques and Mariette had been lovers,

while Jacques struggled with the Swiss courts

to obtain a divorce from his first wife, Sima.

Mariette, a Catholic,

and in no immediate danger was supposed to join him

in the US a few months later.

But the war escalated.

For the duration of world war II,

Jacques was separated from Mariette

and his sons in Switzerland.

During his seven years alone,

Jacques's memories were only recorded in still image.

And even those were rare,

as he spent his time designing

and manufacturing countless cameras.

At first, I thought it was strange

that he didn't make films during the war.

Business was booming and he had a home in America.

But then it started to make sense to me.

When he was at home

and he could bring the camera up to his eye,

who could he record?

[Jacques Voiceover] March 21, 1947.

New York, more than seven years

have passed since the last page of my diary.

These seven years are perhaps the most volatile in my life.

Three companies formed,

one after another here, hard work,

hopes and disillusionments,

war and separation from my family.

Parents, two years ago I learned of my parents

and sister's tragic death at the hands

of the brutal Germans.

My brother has also disappeared.

It is very hard to get used to the idea

of the tragic departure of my loved ones.

(somber piano music)

Boys, Raphael married.

Emil, about to get married too.

(paper rustling)

Alyssa: After that, he never wrote in his journal again.

Since we've just recently learned

what he knew about his family

having been killed by the Nazis,

now I see him differently.

I think that maybe he was racing through life.

He was trying to get so many things in.

He was maybe trying to not think about it.

I had no idea that these things had happened

and I certainly had no idea that he knew about them,

but he did and I don't think he told anybody in the family.

(somber piano music)

Alyssa: I couldn't help reading Jacques's last journal

entry again and again,

hoping it would end differently.

As he counted the years of separation from his parents

and siblings in Russia,

I imagined his future reunion with them.

(somber piano music)

Even though I've been working on this for 12 years,

or whatever the reality is,

I think it's like

11 and a 1/2. Most of your adult life.

Most of my adult life.

(chuckling)

He had never come to me in my dreams,

or at least,

I'd never had a dream about Jacques until a month ago.

So what happened in the dream was I was going

up an elevator in a high-rise for a job interview.

I'm nervous, I don't really even know

what the job is in my mind at the moment.

And I go and I sit in the reception and they call me in.

And so I walk in the door and there's a man standing

in front of me.

(Alyssa sniffing)

And he turns around and it's JB

and he's interviewing me.

I'm sorry.

I don't even know why I'm emotional.

It kind of hits you by surprise, doesn't it?

I can see that.

Yeah, so anyways,

he's interviewing me for a job and I think it's, like,

to make the documentary.

And I don't feel confident at all,

total self-doubt.

He gave me some advice.

He said something about,

(Alyssa sighing)

it's not about the place,

it's the context.

Wow.

And then I kind of walked out,

shook his hand and I said,

even if I don't get the job,

this isn't even sad,

I don't know I'm crying.

I said, even if I don't get the job,

can we go get dinner,

I have some questions for you?

(laughing)

And he's like, sure.

And I woke up. Wow.

And I still don't know if I got the job.

(relaxing piano music)

After the war Jacques flew to Switzerland

to finally reunite with Mariette

and bring her back to the US.

Starting in December of 1947,

he filmed again.

This is where my great aunt Carole enters his story.

(relaxing upbeat classical music)

Carole: Finally, after 22 years of elicit love,

they were elicit,

they were Americans.

They became citizens.

(relaxing upbeat classical music)

My father was very patriotic about America.

What he most cherished in America, I think,

was a sense of possibility,

that everything was possible.

Being Jewish had cost so much over so many years

and been such a factor in Europe.

And now he was breathing what he thought as the free air

of a new world and he just said,

I'm not gonna mess this up.

I'm not gonna bring in the old hatreds

that was part of the air that you breathed in Europe.

I'm gonna do this a new way.

Alyssa: He wanted his sons to be part

of his new life in America.

A year later, his son,

my grandfather, Emil came to New York.

But Raphael stayed in Switzerland with his wife, Lillian,

to help watch over his mother, Sima.

Soon, Emil and Margo started a family of their own.

First Michel.

Then my father, Robin.

And finally, Laureen.

(upbeat jive music)

Jacques and Emil worked together closely.

They created new lines

of still 35 millimeter civilian cameras based

on his military inventions.

(upbeat jive music)

There was a huge post-war boom in the early '50s.

There was plenty of money around

and one of the things that you did

with it was you bought consumer goods.

And now cameras were seen as consumer goods.

When the war ended,

that company was in fact a big player.

But more importantly, I think,

for him, he's developing the market for his ideas.

And it looks like things,

it's gonna be smooth sailing.

This is like a launchpad.

You have to assume that it was kind

of an immigrant's stream come true.

Introducer: Here is Edward R. Murrow.

Edward: "This, I believe."

Jacques Bolsey heads one

of America's leading photographic companies.

He mass produced the first amateur motion picture camera.

During World War II,

his research and development talents were pressed

into service by our armed forces.

This is Jacques Bolsey's creed.

[Jacques Voiceover] I applied for the citizenship

the day I arrived in the United States in 1939.

I wanted to become an American

because I believed this country is a living example

of the benefits available to all,

of democratic ideas and freedom which we want to preserve

and which we are ready to defend for our own good

and for the good of the world,

any color race or creed.

(relaxing upbeat classical music)

My grandfather, when the company was doing very well,

purchased a castle in Tarrytown

and he had huge plans for it.

He felt really strongly that it was the job

of private companies

to give their employees very generous benefits of all kinds,

that it was just a duty to provide services,

to provide education,

to improve their lives.

And one of the reasons he bought the castle was

because he was gonna create there a kind of

community,

a kind of

socialist, although he didn't use the word,

fortunately, he would've been kicked out,

a kind of a socialist environment in the sense

that he wanted his workers to have a full stake

in the company, emotionally,

as well as in every other way.

He wanted them to feel like the company was theirs.

For him, success wasn't money.

He didn't show any real interest

in amassing huge quantities of money.

Because anything that he brought in,

aside from what he needed to live

and have a normal middle-class life,

went right back into the company,

right back into new ideas.

But he was also trying to build this city for employees.

He would be building all these different projects

and they would get around in electric cars in the community.

I think that my father was looking ahead

to a time when business

and progress would give everyone a chance at happiness.

Alyssa: Jacques continue to innovate new consumer cameras

but the competition proved to be fierce.

(camera clicking)

(relaxing piano music)

The 35 millimeter still camera market

was really a difficult,

cutthroat market to be in

because there were a tremendous number of manufacturers.

And suddenly my grandfather discovered there was no money.

That's according to my dad, anyway.

My dad described it to me in kind of sketchy details,

but he went from being a wealthy man, essentially,

to a man with nothing.

The whole thing just literally falls apart.

I mean, it goes from we're taking off to the moon

to, oh no, we're crashing,

we're crashing back to earth.

My mother said American business changed him.

American business was so driven,

so tough, so go, go, go

that she said it changed him completely.

He no longer had the ease in the sense

that he had time to do anything except work.

And that's what I remember.

I saw my father's mood darken and darken and darken.

Again, there wasn't any laughter.

Inventors also are very often pretty self-absorbed

because their minds are so active.

Everything is devoted to this hopeful creative process

that the inventor is engaged in.

They're not paying that much attention

to the people around them.

(relaxing piano music)

Alyssa: I've always looked up to my dad.

He's been the inventor in my life.

He designs, builds and runs hot water drills

for scientific research.

(snowy mountain ambience)

Ever since my eighth birthday,

he would leave her Antarctica for a few months.

I made him a scarf to keep him warm

which he wore every year.

When I dove into researching Jacques,

he was right there with me.

One day, I asked if he'd ever shot with the Bolex?

And he said, no.

The next field season he brought the camera with him.

(camera clicking)

(wind howling)

(relaxing piano music)

In the late '50s Jacques returned to Switzerland

with my grandfather, Emil.

Together with Raphael,

they visited the place where he

had designed the Bolex 30 years earlier.

But they were now outsiders looking in.

The smiling and the laughing I see

in the '30s in the movies,

that may have been lost by the time the '50s rolled by.

All the things that happened with Paillard,

the struggles that came in the '50s after that,

these visions, he knows he can do these things,

but he keeps getting held back.

(somber piano music)

Alyssa: While Jacques could only reminisce about

what had been in the past,

the Bolex camera continued to cement its legacy.

(upbeat jive music)

(horse hooves stomping)

(car engine revving)

(camera clicking)

(crowd cheering)

(jet firing)

(crackers banging)

We went up to Tuttle Cameras in Long Beach

and bought this Bolex Reflex,

which was like I died and went to heaven.

And then got on a plane with five of my friends,

with a book on how to make movies,

and that was the beginning of it.

(relaxing guitar music)

"The Endless Summer" was about two young guys traveling

around the world,

following the summer and exploring for surf.

Simple as that.

It was kind of like a glorified home movie.

When it became sort of mainstream,

movie critics go, well,

who is the producer?

Well, me, I guess.

Well, who is the director?

Well, me.

Well, who is a photographer?

Well.

Who's the editor?

And well, you know,

just, that's how we did it.

You just did everything.

(upbeat percussion music)

We didn't have much equipment.

I had a Bolex in a case with a hundred foot loads

of film and a black bag and some lenses,

just what you could carry.

Part of the deal then was exploring for new surf spots,

West Africa and a lot of places nobody had ever been

to looking for surf.

Senegal, Ghana,

Nigeria, South Africa,

India, Tahiti,

Australia, New Zealand.

We basically went around the world.

I used the same camera for all my films.

(surf swishing)

I got real good at winding it up real quick.

'Cause with surfing,

you already shot a wave and here comes another one.

(imitating winding zoom)

I got really good at cranking it over really quick.

(ominous upbeat music)

I was a 22-year-old aspiring painter,

1967.

In that year I saw a retrospective called,

"New American Underground",

and that was lots of non-narrative movies

by American painters.

That impressed me a lot.

And I realized that maybe filmmaking was some sort

of continuation of painting with other means.

And I loved the idea.

And I thought the only way you can do this is by doing it.

And you could only do it if you have a camera.

I made the first film of mine called "Schauplatze",

which got lost.

"Silver City" and "Same Player Shoots Again".

I made a number of films on it.

And you could do so much with it because it was lightweight.

You could shoot in any situation.

I liked it when the image slowly appeared out of colors.

And I also shot it till the very last frame so it

also then goes out into strange colors.

And I liked the ins and outs of these films.

It was the ideal tool to learn the craft of filmmaking.

(dial tone beeping music)

I made a film called "Dyketactics"

because I was heterosexual and I made love with a woman

for the first time.

And when I did,

it changed my life.

The connection between touch and sight

became my aesthetic to bring a sense of touch to the cinema.

It turned into a lesbian commercial.

(dramatic choir music)

I call my cinema, active cinema.

And now I project around the room.

I get off the screen.

I make people move to see the film.

I figured that if we could make the audience active,

that they, the blood flowing to their brain,

not just to their body,

would make them think and consider more

when they went into the world or the polling place.

(dramatic ominous music)

Alyssa: One day I received a call

from the Sunshine Coast in Canada

about two Canadian explorers who had used the Bolex

from the 1930s through 1970s,

Colin Hanney and John Kaasa.

I was invited to meet with Colin's widow, Shendra,

and John's son, Maynard.

Colin, wherever he went,

he took his cameras.

And in 1960 he decided to go down to Chiapas in Mexico

where he had heard that a group of Maya Indians

who had not been conquered by the Spanish ever,

because they disappeared into the forest,

and so he wanted to find these people.

(cicadas chirping)

They began the jungle trek for seven days,

macheteing their way up ravines and valleys

and exquisite scenes.

They finally arrived at Naha, the lake,

and ghosting out of the lake into the shore

were these Lacandona Maya with their long,

blue-black hair and the white cotton tunics.

It was like going to another planet.

And finding there are peoples who lived so well together,

it was just a really pure, simple lifestyle.

For Colin at the time,

it was such a magical experience.

It was part of him all his life.

(birds chirping)

(water swishing)

Well, my dad,

he loved the outdoors.

He spent a considerable time in the bush and a lot

of it was just for the purpose of taking pictures.

(fire crackling)

Nothing really stopped him.

(raft engine humming)

In the early spring when the water was very high

in the McLeod River in Alberta,

he made a raft and started down the river.

That's where he lost this camera and much of his luggage.

He got out,

went to shore and he just marked the trees on both sides

of the river.

Then about four months later,

when the river had subsided,

he went back to that spot.

He waded back and forth across the river

and he found his camera.

Picked it up. Took it home.

Took it apart and cleaned it.

Kept right on making pictures with it.

(river gushing)

He never even bothered looking for new cameras.

He was satisfied with this type.

Alyssa: As an attempt to revitalize the Bolsey company,

Jacques held a press conference for his new invention,

the Single 8 Pocket Camera.

[Jacques Voiceover] In 1958, we finally came out

with the Bolsey 8 millimeter Miniature Movie Camera,

the smallest camera in the world.

It is a very simple camera.

I tried to take such a camera out

of the class of photographic item

and bring it into the class of appliances,

most specifically, of pocket appliances.

The main idea being that such a camera should be used

by people who knew absolutely nothing about photography,

and can be instructed in practical,

good picture taking within a minute or so.

Such a pocket appliance should be as easy

to use as a pencil or pen.

I am sure that such a pocket appliance-type camera

will be like everything in life,

just another beginning and another step

forward.

(Bolex camera clicking)

Alyssa: In January of 1962,

Jacques died of a sudden heart attack.

He had just turned 66.

The day my father died was a sleety,

freezing,

wet day.

They told us that my father had been brought in

to the White Plains Hospital right away.

We raced over to the hospital

which was only a few blocks from where we were at the time.

The doctor, Dr. Silverstein arrived.

He was the family doctor.

He went in and a few minutes later he came out

and looked at my mother and said,

I think he said, he's gone.

And my mother was completely flabbergasted.

She sat up and then she stood up

and then she burst into tears.

(somber eery music)

Alyssa: We found a letter that Jacques had written

to himself three weeks before he died.

[Jacques Voiceover] December 18, 1961.

I am not afraid to die.

I am not afraid of death.

I just think of the amount of experience,

know-how and certain knowledge I have accumulated

during my over 50 years of activities and hard work.

There are still so many things to be finalized

but I am afraid I have not the time to finish.

I believe that these things are beneficial not only

to my family and interesting to me as a challenge,

but they are also possibly beneficial

to some of the humanity at large.

I am afraid I may die before I have time to finalize them,

another disturbing thought that does not help my work.

Many new ideas keep coming all the time, incessantly.

That means I have to live even longer

to fulfill the task I assigned myself.

Methuselah,

why didn't you leave me your secret to longevity?

I just don't know what my dad thought,

it's just too hard to fathom

what he would think, reading this.

His whole life was always in the shadow of his father.

His whole world was crashing down around him.

Everything his father had left him was crashing down

and it had started crashing down before his father died.

All the dreams kind of were built upon this one foundation

at that point in time.

The B8 was gonna carry things forward.

Super 8 happened at just the wrong moment.

There was no way for Emil

or Mariette to be able to fix the situation

because neither of them had the tools.

And when he died,

that wasn't there anymore.

And

what happened after that was basically what happens

to every company when they become under-capitalized

and they have problems,

they just kind of crumbled.

(somber piano music)

The company was Jacques.

I mean, that's what it came down to,

it was Jacques,

it was the embodiment of him.

My dad used to use the word, pipe dream.

Sometimes he would tell me I needed fewer pipe dreams.

I think that is a reflection of what he thought about

what his father had.

Not because he didn't understand the great things

that he had done,

but he saw it all come to that end which was

hard to fathom.

(somber piano music)

Alyssa: From what I understand,

Emil was the one who tried, well,

one, along with your mother,

tried to save the business.

Oh yes. After he died.

Oh yes. I wonder if

he felt like he failed his father in a way

and that he kind of didn't wanna revisit after that.

Carole: That's perfectly possible

that the whole experience was very painful

and very difficult for him,

ending in defeat.

I wouldn't be a bit hat surprised.

Listen, to tell you the truth,

I've been unable to account for why I

have stayed away from it.

I've never understood that.

(relaxing piano music)

Alyssa: Maybe the reason my grandfather,

Emil, didn't talk about the past was

because he was afraid we would chase our own pipe dreams.

In his own way,

Emil must have been trying to protect the family

from facing the same hardships that he

and his father went through.

But looking at it now,

Jacques' dreams are the reason my family is here today.

In a sense,

his dream saved our family.

I think deep down,

Emil knew it too.

(relaxing upbeat piano music)

(Bolex camera clicking)

It's been over 90 years

since Jacques penciled his first drawings of the Bolex

and the camera is still being made.

Paillard is gone and now the owners are Bolex International

in Yverdon, Switzerland.

Even though the building looks big,

the Bolex International offices are now just a couple

of rooms where, Marc,

the office manager and, Otello,

the technician work every day to keep the Bolex going.

(buttons clicking)

Welcome, this is the reception,

Bolex International in Switzerland.

This is the place where I answer the phone,

where I reply to emails,

where I make all my invoices.

This is the place where the technician works,

where he assembles 16 millimeter

and super 16 film cameras.

Today, we still produce cameras in 16 millimeter

and super 16 for passionate people who still want

to shoot with such reliable,

old-style cameras.

And many people are wondering

why we keep so many spare parts in stock?

We have about 80,000 different spare parts,

so many people can still use this technology from the past.

Alyssa: How many do you make a year would you say?

It depends on the year,

about 20 every year,

more or less.

Today, because in the past we produced thousands

of cameras but the technology has changed,

but we have still very passionate clients,

customers who want to film,

to shoot with 16 millimeter and super 16 cameras.

Most of our customers today are young people

between 18 and 30 years old.

(skateboard wheels rumbling on tar)

(skateboard banging on tar)

(upbeat instrumental music)

Alyssa: To me, success,

Jacques' success wasn't in accomplishing everything

he wanted to do because there was always a new idea,

but he planted seeds and he never stopped.

He just kept going.

It's almost like the Bolex.

It just keeps going.

And the number of lives Jacques has touched,

the people his camera brings together,

the stories they have told,

the memories they have shared,

even now, during the transition from film to digital,

his vision continues to play out.

The footprints of the Bolex are everywhere.

And with the collaboration and the imagination of thousands,

his seed of an idea continues to grow.

(relaxing classical music)

Introducer: And now, "This, I believe".

Edward: "This, I believe."

This is Jacques Bolsey's creed.

[Jacques Voiceover] Be straight as an arrow

in your dealings with man.

Always look forward and up.

Never despair, as long as the sun shines there's hope.

I believe that so long as I follow this guide post,

I will prosper and be happy,

this I believe.