On a bright sunny fall day in 1941, people in Kannapolis, N.C., danced and smiled for a camera. I know this because the film that camera recorded still exists.

Now, 76 years later, they are going to dance and smile for us here in Concord. The images of blue sky, waving hands, maybe even a little unease with the camera, shine through seven decades like the light of a little private time machine. In a way, they reveal a fundamental truth about what binds us together – across the street, across the town, across the years.

The film was made by H. Lee Waters, probably without a long-term use in mind. He was looking for a way to earn some dollars and thought if he filmed people, they might pay to see themselves at a theater. He traveled to towns in the South doing just that. You might say it was a modern-day variation of the “bird’s-eye-view” drawings that were popular in the 19th century, in which an artist would come into town and paint an imagined overhead view. The key was to include as many houses and buildings as possible and as accurately as possible. The theory was if your property was in the painting you would want to buy one to have for your wall.

The 1875 bird’s-eye of Concord was reprinted several years ago and can still be found displayed on walls around the city.

Waters took this concept to a more personal level. Forget the real estate; go right to the people themselves. And as is evidenced from the film he left us, he did just that. People love to have their pictures taken and he seemed to go where the most people were – schools, factories, swimming holes or just plain old busy streets. People come up and look into the camera lens almost as if they expect to see us looking back at them.

That is the power of the captured image. It can hold a moment, like a breath, and exhale it forward to a place where nothing changes – except everything around it. Forward it goes, years into some future where people like us gaze at the event and imagine. We are there, but we aren’t. We see one dimension and fill in the rest – the sounds, the smells, the wind in trees, the people just out of view.

Though the picture appears whole, it is really only a fragment of the moment captured – a little hook on which to hang our imagination. Still, it is possible to be touched by the common ground. Years may have passed, but smiles never grow stale, happiness never looks out of place. Even without the sound, there is much to hear because you just know what it is supposed to sound like.

From the vantage point of looking back, we know other things as well. We know what is waiting in the future.

For the people of Kannapolis, World War II is waiting just up ahead. You look into their eyes to see if there is any evidence that they know this. Do they show worry for the world around them? Do the boys soon to be soldiers still hold on to their innocence? What is there to see because of what I know that they didn’t see at the time? A drip in the sky, a hint of fear, inhibitions abandoned because tomorrow may never come?

What a privilege it is for us to have the ability to look back on a place, a moment so unconcerned about what we might see. If they had written down words in a journal, would they convey as succinctly what these old films do?

A special program showing the film of Kannapolis, set to live music will be presented March 5 at the Capitol Center for the Arts. Composer Jenny Scheinman has set the film to music, and she will be there to perform live as the film plays on the screen.

It should be a wonderful evening of music and a look back to another time, another place – a time machine for anyone who dares to take the ride.

(John Gfroerer of Concord owns a video production company based at the Capitol Center for the Arts.)