A History Lost and Found : Culture: Little things make a life--and a city. To explore those lives, Emma Pullen is collecting home movies and photos that capture the experiences of L.A.’s African Americans.

Remember? Just when you thought it was safe to blow out the candles, or slip your newly lost tooth under the pillow, or maybe tear into the Christmas booty . . . out came Dad with that humming and clicking 8-millimeter camera.

With one eye squinting and one frantic arm sweeping directions, he shouted out the impossible: “Smile, pose, but act natural .”

In the age of video, those slim metal cans filled with celluloid milestones, carefully filed away, have become as forgotten as the day-to-day events they carefully recorded.

Emma Pullen, a local filmmaker and writer, is exploring those lost worlds. For Black History Month at the William Grant Still Art Center, she encouraged local African American families to pull their treasures from the top shelf of their guest closets, basement corners, sunny attics, and give those memories yet another stroll--right back on the movie screen.

Last weekend and next, “Celebrating Black L.A.: A History of African Americans in Los Angeles” is screening home movies as well as documentaries--including KCOP’s “Black Angelenos” and KCET’s “Ode to Central Avenue”--highlighting the history of black Los Angeles.

Also on display are photos pulled from scrapbooks and memory books loaned by Angeleno families.

“We wanted to celebrate Black History Month,” Pullen said, “but we wanted to celebrate black history in L.A. “

Assembling the lost history of communities of color in Los Angeles has often proved a challenge. Newspapers, libraries and other information sources seldom collected what was considered “peripheral” or “specialized” information. And until very recently, even the city’s Central Library photo collection offered only a slim visual sampling of L.A.’s racial and ethnic variety.

To glimpse the city’s early diversity, or to acquire a sense of how our forebears endeavored to get along, requires equal measures of patience and tenacity. And even the most seasoned city historian is sobered when confronted by the dearth of historic images, and the realization of what it may take to fill in gaps--not just in months or years, but in decades and generations.

Not to become too overwhelmed by the task, Pullen is starting small but with a precise plan of action.

“There had already been several exhibits about black Angelenos, which concentrated on the socially prominent people,” said Pullen, seated on the floor of her Los Feliz apartment, surrounded by copies of sepia-tone portraits of early black Angelenos: Biddy Mason, an ex-slave who amassed a fortune in real estate. And the man the Los Angeles Times once cited as “the richest colored man in Los Angeles”--Robert C. Owens.

“But this city was created by everyone. This exhibit will include the descendants of the well-known as well as the not-so-well-known.”

Digging up specimens hasn’t been as simple as she thought.

“I had difficulty finding films of that era,” she said of the years before 1960. “Cameras were expensive, so was the film.”

With money just about as tight as leisure time, many African Americans didn’t have the luxury to record the fine details of family life.

Still, Pullen has managed to assemble a remarkable collection of moving, personal memories that help flesh out a complex history. L.A. didn’t always deliver the freedoms its boosters promised. And despite the city’s own version of segregation (restrictive housing covenants), these home movies dramatize that the lives, celebrations and daily rituals of black Angelenos weren’t all that different from anyone else’s.

There are mementos like Achielle Hebert’s, who has been storing his memories away in plastic shopping bags hidden away from heat and dust.

As a projectionist around Los Angeles, and at theaters on Central Avenue during its heyday, Hebert had easy access to cameras and projectors. And by watching films, he studied technique by osmosis.

“I’ve got a million pictures dating back,” he boasted, “and that’s why I’ve been able to make all these pictures.”

With living room shades drawn, lights dimmed, he carefully threaded his projector to allow a brief preview. The room shimmers alive with silent memories: of family members gone, of barely recognizable thoroughfares, of younger versions of city fixtures like a newly elected Mayor Tom Bradley.

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A native of Pineville, La., Hebert moved to L.A. with his family in 1922. A postal worker and firefighter, he eventually received a degree in electrical engineering and went on to work for Rockwell International. But for 64 years, Hebert proudly attests, he had a love affair with film.

His home movies reanimate vanished moments: an L.A.-based, all-black Boy Scout Sea Corps; the all-black firefighters of Engine Company 30; the groundbreaking of the Golden State Life Insurance monolith as vintage cars busily power down Adams Boulevard, as well as decades of picnics, parades and Masonic balls.

“Before the Tournament of Roses allowed colored people to participate,” Hebert shouted over the whirring projector, his eyes fixed on a parade of regal black women in white satin formals, set off with red rose corsages, “the Masons put on this event. This was our Rose Parade.”

Pullen stumbled on Hebert’s collection as she did much else--through word-of-mouth and eager recommendations. “I was in Kinko’s the other night laminating a picture,” she said, “and a woman told me about another woman who had some pictures that she thought I might be interested in seeing. It grows like that.”

Sometimes the films and photos tell but a fraction of the story. The smiles or stoic stances, Pullen acknowledges, are not only impeccable shades but perhaps shields against the poor painful aspects of a city that didn’t always deliver the freedom and advantages it promised.

But what Pullen has pulled from those at times indecipherable faces, enigmatic facades: “If they could overcome,” said Pullen, glancing at the faces smiling up from the floor, “some of us really don’t have problems we think we have.”

SCREENING

“Celebrating Black L.A.: A History of African Americans in Los Angeles” will screen home movies Sunday at 3 p.m. at the William Grant Still Arts Center, 2520 S. West View St., Los Angeles; (213) 734-1164. Admission is free.