Alan Hamel ‘very tearful’ after watching footage of deceased family member Suzanne Somers (Exclusive)

Alan Hamel feels bittersweet as he goes through his personal photo and video archives.

The 89-year-old is delving into his past as he prepares several projects to honor the legacy of his late wife, Suzanne Somers. Whether it’s a documentary, a movie based on their love story, or an AI clone that brings the chat experience of Suzanne to friends, family, and fans, Hamel explains that he’s always loved documenting life as it unfolds.

“I’ve been photographing families since the ’60s, and this was before video. Video started in 1960, but it was only for television. There was no video for home movies, and I started shooting Super Eight film in the ’60s. I still have thousands of tapes of just my family that I’ve never seen, because once I shot them, I put them in a box,” he tells PEOPLE.

“And what I’m doing, and this is all going to be in the documentary. What I’m doing is playing all of these tapes and digitizing them at the same time. And one day, after they’re all digitized, they’re going to spend forever in a digital box. And only their next of kin will be allowed in there. There are only two ways to get in. One is facial technology and fingerprints and what happens in the future.”

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Hamel is excited about what this extensive digital archive will mean for his and Summers’ blended family. Summers gave birth to a son, Bruce Summers Jr., with her then-husband Bruce Summers Sr. in 1965, but the couple separated two years later and married Hamel in 1977 after dating for 10 years. Hamel already had children Leslie and Stephen from a previous relationship, but Somers combined their families and raised their children together.

“It’s exciting to look back generations from now on what their families looked like, how they talked, what they did, what they laughed at, where they vacationed, what cars they drove, what jobs they had, how they argued,” he says.

“I love that project. I’m so proud to have all this source material that goes into the documentary, and it’s going to trigger generations to look back. I couldn’t do that. I didn’t know my grandparents. Unfortunately, both of my parents were European, and they were successful, but my grandparents weren’t. And a lot of my uncles, aunts, cousins, etc., were all killed during World War II.”

For Hamel, returning to photography and video is fun, but also emotional.

“I’m sitting there watching it, I’m watching my family, and they forget that there’s a guy with a camera standing there. I’m standing there. They completely forget that, so they don’t change their attitude. . And I look at my mother and my father, who have been missing for a long time. And I’ll be honest, I get very tearful because I get to see my parents and my sister from so many years ago,” he says.

“And it’s a project that I really like and it takes a lot of time, but it’s worth it. It reminds me of a lot of the things that I’ve done in my life that were time consuming and wasted. So I love being a part of that project, which ends up delivering the film and the documentary.”

Combining Summers’ death with his own experience struck Hamel as to how important it is for people to have access to past generations of their families.

“Now Mr. Hamels and Mr. Summers and their families will have access to it, which is great. And it’s exciting to think that 100, 200, 300 years from now, people will be watching what we now call television. Who knows what they’ll be watching generations down the road, but we know that being able to literally go back hundreds of years is very fascinating to them.”