Images hold a very special place in the mind of the viewer. Simultaneously of one time and timeless, objective and subjective, images bring forth textures and dimensions often lost in memory that can reduce the complex into simplistic categories of black and white.
Film is a way to change that, and Arielle Nóbile knows that if employed correctly, film images can illuminate much more than words ever could — especially when it comes to family memories.
“It’s extremely powerful to get to watch your family and to watch yourself,” Nóbile says.
Watching yourself and your family is just what Nóbile has in mind. Based in the greater Boulder area, Nóbile is the founder of Legacy Connection Films, a small production company that recently celebrated its 10th anniversary documenting family histories.
Nóbile — who relocated to the Boulder area in 2008 — has spent her whole life building to this concept. Even in high school, the young filmmaker was armed with a camera and asking the tough questions.
“My first actual, sort of pseudo-documentary, was about the meaning of life,” Nóbile says. “I feel like I’ve always been interested in bigger questions, and I found a way to make it a business.”
Nóbile went on to study theater at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts where she created and performed documentary theater pieces along with the likes of Anna Deavere Smith. After college, Nóbile relocated to Chicago and worked at the Piven Theatre and Second City Theatre, where she honed her skills as a storyteller and a listener.
“When you are interviewing someone, it’s all about them,” Nóbile explains. “You have to really put yourself completely [out of it] — almost become just a big ear. And a big mirror.”
In 2005, Nóbile started small, but started professional. After obtaining a camera and some editing equipment, Nóbile interviewed her own grandmothers with her mind set on producing a product that was personal, but could also help launch her career.
“It was really transformative for my relationship with them, and in general, for both sides of my family,” Nóbile recounts. “It really answered a lot of questions that I always had, about who these women were, beyond what I perceived of them.”
Nóbile was already thinking bigger. This was something that she could do for other families — families who had similar questions.
“I think people are aware of the fact that with younger generations, if they want to connect with them — the grandkids, great-grandkids — they need to do this,” Nóbile says. “Making a 100-page book about their life, while it’s beautiful … is not going to have the same impact on the grandkids and the greatgrandkids who may never pick it up and read it. But a movie will [have that impact].”
Nóbile’s discovery is one shared by all filmmakers: images have the power to transcend time and space. Words on a page may tell a story, but images tell it in the present tense.
That is exactly what captured Linda Leahy’s attention and was the impetus to make her own legacy film.
“I wasn’t really interested in doing ancestry,” Leahy says. “But the [images] seemed to be something I could relate to. Something concrete that I could see.
“My husband’s company is American Hotel Register Company, and this year is our 150th year as a company, so it just seemed timely that we could do something around his family,” Leahy continues. “That was the initial intention, do something with the people in his family, because his grandfather, Thomas Leahy, started the business in 1865.”
Theirs is a multi-generational story, and Nóbile’s approach to the material was a multi-layered one.
“I usually don’t make one film, I usually make multiple movies for a family,” Nóbile explains.
“People don’t know what they want, because they don’t know what’s possible,” Nóbile continues. “I usually steer them toward what would be the best for their family.”
For the Leahys, Nóbile made six movies in all, interviewing 12-13 people over the course of a year. The films cover the family’s lineage and business, specifically looking at the maternal side of the family.
“I personally feel, especially in these patriarchal business lines, which there are many of, the women’s stories often get lost, and [Linda Leahy] has four daughters, and I just thought this is so important that they know where you come from too,” Nóbile says.
To help out with the production process, Nóbile enlisted the help of Boulder-based digital editor, J.J. Evans, who Leahy singles out in her praise for LCF: “He was extraordinarily skillful at pulling out the story, pulling out the sound bites, pulling out the thing and making the transitions just like a film.”
Leahy was so pleased with the end results that she debuted one of the videos — which focused on the history of the American Hotel Register — at the company’s 150th anniversary celebration to a dinner crowd full of customers and business associates.
“It was about 20 minutes long, but it told the story of our company in a way that we couldn’t have even thought of doing,” Leahy says. “There wasn’t a dry eye in the place; it was just an extraordinarily powerful film.”
And like all filmmakers, Nóbile achieves that power with the production process. Everyone has a story to tell, but the ability to tell it well is where images derive their emotional power.
“I try to tell the stories that will unite the family versus be divisive,” Nóbile explains. “This is not about looking for some truth, necessarily. … There is no such thing as truth, everyone has their own truth, everyone has their own right to their memory. So I’m not trying to design some ultimate, ‘This happened,’ necessarily, but more: this is how this was remembered and this is the soul of this person.”
Leahy’s recount of the American Hotel Register video’s debut echoes that sentiment: “The story spoke to me. And I think the story spoke to everybody in that room.”
But, and there is always a but, quality never comes cheap. The average price tag for a LCF production runs at $50,000 and up — Leahy’s project was over $100,000. But as Leahy says, it takes money for the amount of time and effort that Nóbile puts into it.
Arielle Nóbile established Legacy Connection Films as a one-woman operation but her staff has now grown to three — communications director Heather Marchek Lopez and editor J.J. Evans have both joined. And with 10 years, 350 interviews and 100 movies under her belt, Nóbile is just getting started.
