Past Futures: Nostalgia in the Age of Escapism

An online collection of old home movies begs the question: can you be nostalgic for other people's memories? This video explores that question, among others pertaining to the nature of nostalgia in this digital day and age.

Music by:

I'm grateful for musicians like them who make their wonderful work free for people like me to use in our projects.

Further reading:

Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past by Simon Reynolds
The Future of Nostalgia by Svetlana Boym
The Past is a Foreign Country by David Lowenthal

Recommended articles:

VHS effects provided by Free Stock Footage Archive and Christopher Huppertz. VHS sfx provided by nicStage. All used under a Creative Commons license.

[AsherKaye]

Thank you all for watching! I started writing this video two years ago, and only just took it off the shelf, blew off the dust, and decided to finish it. Closure on an outstanding project feels so good.


If you can spare a dollar or two per video, I'd greatly appreciate it. You're allowing me to continue doing this, and to keep getting better at it. I certainly have a lot of learning to do, I'm only just getting started.

As for my next video, I have a few ideas—considering exploring the approach to dialogue exemplified in My Dinner With André and Linklater's Before trilogy, which are some of my favourite films and break many established screenwriting and filmmaking conventions. I'm also considering a video about the final frontiers of film technology, where we're going next, and what room there is for development and improvement. I'm also open to any ideas and suggestions.

[leattts]

"Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards." - Søren Kierkegaard

[Ferelmakina]

Dude you think it's nostalgia but I think it might be just escapism/regret/desires of belonging, making you emotional

[pridefulmaster]

That was...beautiful. I've never seen an essay that hit me like this.

[jean]

this is beautifully written. thank you for this. i recently lost someone and the only thing i am holding into are photos, videos, voice messages and letters we've taken, written and sent to each other. there's no cure, time's still running and as the videos and voice messages run out, all i can do is cling on to them for one last time and let go.

[leipzigergnom]

I've been seeing LOTS of 80s and 90s nostalgia in western (especially American) culture. I was born in 1994, so I often wonder when people will start feeling nostalgia for the early 2000s, which comprise some of my most significant childhood memories.

[ethanmacdonald]

Can't like this enough, such a well-constructed and wonderfully edited essay. There is a quiet but confident self-awareness and a distinct lack of pretense here; the point that the merits of nostalgia depend on one's personal relationship with it is an important one to make.
I also appreciated how personal it was without becoming a glorified rant or a scattered collection of musings. There was a definite flow from one section to the next. Earnest introspection without self-deprecation is rare these days. YouTube needs more content like this.

[chlemaris]

Thank you for this essay. It's like a Bradbury's book or a Miyazaki movie - light, transparent and true.

[petersolomon]

To my way of thinking Asher Isbrucker is a unique YouTube Channel Operator. He may have become a more conventionally abstract, experimental Film-maker, if he weren't so arrested, and articulate about his interior worlds. Ingeniously, this young aesthete has found a way to socially share his introversion and melancholia. Long may he continue to post video work on YouTube.

[seanramsdell]

I got a cure for your video: retrospective-positive and negative aspects of our past. Put the retro in retrospect.

[stanverlaan]

Wow, great video! I often find myself wondering about nostalgia and memories from the past, and you captured the feeling perfectly. Thank you.

[karenceciliano]

There’s moments that anxiety overtakes and I think of memories, specifically, settings of moments. Not just particular moments, because I could have been in those places more than once, but the feeling of peace they brought me calms me down. I can forget faces or spoken words, but the familiarity I find in places that contribute to happiness cannot be erased. The smell, joy, and laughter they brought. All I can say is that I am forever thankful for those moments. Because even when life doesn’t seem so beautiful sometimes, it once was. Or it is, I just don’t know it.

[JayJay-ncpr]

In the 80s the world was nostalgic for the 50s and 60s and since the 00s it’s been the 80s that we look all on but now I’m seeing a drive for 00s nostalgia it’s a cycle

[carsonkundolf]

When I was little, my grandfather would tell me stories of his childhood and upbringings- the people and places around him and things he used to do. I grew up on a world that I never experienced and the first time I ever had a chance to see it was through HIS fathers old 8mm movies he shot back in the 40/50s. For some of those people that I never met it felt off and Nostalgic to say. I kinda knew them but never met them, yet I felt a comfort watching those films. I couldn’t share the same memories or emotions my grandfather probably felt while watching the film but I guess I could we shared that nostalgia of a by gone place and era. I don’t know why I shared that but your essay on Nostalgia got to me personally. It was good.

[brstfr]

Thank you, Asher. I spend a lot of time thinking about and indulging in vicarious nostalgia or, as I usually think of it, nostalgia for a time I never experienced myself. Older literature, music, and movies are my ways to indulge in this nostalgia--a complex emotion I savor for its ambivalent mixture pf pain, longing, and sense of familiarity and continuity. I happily subscribed to your channel today and look forward to seeing what else you are working on.

[SnoutyPig]

This was hypnotic and cool. Not sure I actually heard much of what you said since I was transported simply by the timbre of your voice.

[marclayne]

I have many family films and photos, going back to 1950.... Super 8 & Leica camera...'The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there' LP Hartley....

[LikeStoriesofOld]

Fantastic job on this! Can't wait to see more of your work. If you haven't already; you should check out The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, I remember them doing a video on exactly this feeling.

[amazinggrace]

Profound! The first time anyone has ever fully describe what goes on inside of me. Now if I just had a Way to escape it.

[leopoldopetrieska]

sensational video. the quiet music, cute home videos and soothing voice tone makes me feel cozy, but the subject and its implications make me more distressed, an interesting combination.