the person behind every film

MEET YOUR FILMMAKER

A legacy film asks for more than good cameras. It asks for trust. Every In My Day film is personally guided by founder Nathaniel Puffalt.

meet your filmmaker

NATHANIEL PUFFALT

In my day films was born from a deep core memory. In grade 4, my class and I were asked to interview a grandparent about one thing they cherished. Our teacher gave us examples like brooches, toys or hairbrushes from their childhood, or perhaps from their own children's childhood. I knew exactly who I wanted to interview right away. My Dad's mother. My grandma who bought my favourite cereal whenever she knew I was coming to visit her and grandpa on the family farm. A selfless woman who's warmth outshone the sun as soon as your small hands finally wriggled the old porch door open into her kitchen. Her reverence for people and the land was instilled into me from a young age and if she kept bits of string and endless buttons just in case of distant hard times, I could only imagine the things she kept that she truly cherished. 

By this time I heard that the matriarch of my family was a child in Poland when World War 2 set fire to the world. This fueled my curiosity. Could she have some relic from hundreds of years ago passed down from generations of our family in the old country? I eagerly set out to find the answer but what I learnt was the furthest from I expected and shaped who I would become for the rest of my life. 

When I asked her over the phone, she asked for a couple days to think about it. As I waited for what felt like ages back then, my parents reminded me to be patient. A few days later she called back, agreeing that the next time we saw each other I could interview her. I grabbed my Talkboy recorder, a fresh tape and prepared my first studio in my childhood bedroom. When the day finally arrived, nothing could have prepared for me for what Grandma would reveal has her most cherished thing. 

I can still picture every detail of my room: the colors cast by my lava lamp, my lego in the corner, drawings hanging from the wall, my bunkbed with a navy sheet my mom had sewn to make it into a fort. My grandma was wearing a flowery pink blouse, the lines in her hands and face held an elegance that children learn to revere. Her smile shining brightly, as always, despite the nervousness she must have felt. I hit the button that starts recording words that will stay with me forever, that I will pass down to my son and daughter, that they will pass down to theirs. 

"What is the one thing you cherish most grandma?" I ask expecting her to pull a golden tarnished relic from her purse. Grandma takes a deep breath in and slowly breathes out. She begins to tell me about her childhood. About how her mother, father and brother lived on beautiful farm in the polish countryside. About the orchard with fruit of every kind, the garden full of food, the fields of wheat and flowers, chickens, pigs and a few cows. Her family had been farming this land since immigrating from Germany a couple hundred years prior. The land was fertile and so prosperous that they even had hired hands. A paradise on earth. She told me about loving the chickens and getting lost in a field of poppies. Memories that inspired her reverence for the world around her. 

Then the war came marching. Her father successfully hid from the Nazi conscriptions for a time but was eventually found hiding in the grain silo and sent to the eastern front. She told me her mom would catch fish, salt them and then add them into the care package she would send to the front. The family farm and all able bodies were enlisted for the war effort, producing as much food as possible for the soldiers who came knocking regularly. As the months and years ground on she remembered smaller and smaller portions, less playing and missing her father. She told me about the fierce resilience her Mother exuded with every breath. A ferocity that kept her and her children together through unimaginable hardship. When liberation finally came to Poland, any Germans remaining were forced to work as part of reparations for the war. The farm was now government property and her family would work the land while watching their home dismantled and one fruit tree at time burnt for warmth. She remembered the pigs eating better than her. Through tears she remembered a faith in Jesus that was instilled by candlelight every night with a Bible tied across her mother's neck. 

Throughout all this time she had no idea that her father had survived the eastern front and years in a Russian POW camp. That upon surviving long enough to be released, he was sponsored by his brother to come to Canada, but not before leaving word with one of his old hired hands to find his family and tell them he was alive. 

After 10 years, a war, an Atlantic crossing, and countless miles across 2 continents, at a small prairie railway station in Broadview Saskatchewan she was finally reunited with her father. She would go on to marry a farmer, raise 3 girls and 3 boys and together with the love her life build their own paradise on earth.

I remember sitting there speechless until Grandma finally said "So what I cherish most is... freedom." Not a thing or object. Not some tarnished relic. An idea that thanks to her story I could actually begin to grasp. An idea that was embedded into every ounce of my being and inspired me to become who I am today. 

 
Grandma was my first interview, decades later she became my first legacy film interview. Seeing the impact her story has had on not just my life but on our entire extended family has shown me how important these stories are. Stories that have shaped who we are today and that will continue to live on, inspiring future generations of our family thanks to Grandma’s words captured forever in film. It has been a gift I am proud to have given my family. In doing so I realized that other families deserve this gift as well. 

 
Which is exactly why I founded In My Day Films, so that I could be of service to others who want to give this gift to their families as well. So that the stories that shape us are remembered and passed down forever.

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