Last weekend I have found some forgotten rolls in a basement we rent and used to be a kind of fallout shelter under a Soviet-type blockhouse.
Even though it was intended to be sheltered at the time of bombing the place was used as community club rooms and workshops for various groups like radio amateurs and people who built small airplanes and other models. This has ended as the Soviet Union crashed and Hungary transformed into a capitalist structure and so the governmental support of these activities canceled. Since then we used this basement as storage, and as we moved to a smaller flat we had to store things which we shouldn’t have there due to the lack of room.
Unfortunately, some very “clever” guys broke in a few years and destroy everything which was fragile and stole everything which they thought was worth for. Therefore many things including these few rolls of film were forgotten. Time to time we go down and try to clean up the place as we don’t want to keep it longer. And this is how I found some film in this dirty and wet place.
This basement is a really special for me, lots of memories and full with retro stuff. Huge iron doors, old electron-pipe based radios, even older posters about girls and movies on the walls from the 70s and all of these covered with a thick layer of dust and spider-nets. Some posters are funny, others hold messages of the propaganda of that time. So this is really a kind of time-capsule for me with a very special atmosphere.
Apart from the obvious signs of destruction done by the “clever” guys and time some water pipes got leaked that’s why we had to deal with a lot of moisture in there. I can tell you moisture and dust is not really ideal for keeping your negatives safe. As it turned out the emulsion was completely eaten by some fungus and the pictures can be easily washed down and lost by any attempt of cleaning. Therefore most of the pictures are completely ruined and those ones which I could finally scan are in pretty bad shape. Although I suppose some would like the unique look of them.
The rolls come from the late 70s as I found some film packaging with the note “process it before 1979” and my Father confirmed that it is highly possible.
All in all, it was a great fun to recover some pieces of history, especially because the pictures were taken by my father. I am trying to get background information of the usable scans so I may update this post. I hope you will also like some of the images.
camerajunky 