Welcome

I was just 18 when my Father died. He drowned on holiday in Spain.

The following few months were incredibly difficult with small comfort provided by the photos and shared memories. It just so happened that a month before he died, my Father had attended a wedding. On the wedding film was ten seconds of my Father walking and talking, footage that I would come to treasure for the rest of my life. 

3 weeks before my own wedding in 1998, my Mother passed away. As the days went by, I realised that not only would I miss the incredible force that she was, but also the stories and anecdotes she told of my Father and her own incredible family history.

I realised too late that I had missed an opportunity to commit to memory the stories they would so beautifully recall. There are so many things that their own grandchildren will never know.

Family history is so extraordinarily precious that it shouldn’t have to wait for a BBC camera crew to turn up and offer to delve through the past. We owe it to our Family to create something permanent that will last for generations to come, stories our children would be proud to hear about their ancestors.

Within 3 generations we tend to be forgotten and our stories lost to time. Our voices and mannerisms forgotten even sooner. I want to change that by curating a beautifully produced film that contains interviews and archive footage to help retell the stories of private families that value their history.

Andrew Gemmell

Founder and CEO of The Family Film