With a week left to go before Home Movie Day 2006, we’re launching this blog to bring together links to Home Movie Day in the news across the country, reports from Home Movie Day sites, and any other news of interest to the Home Movie Day community. Please send your links to the Yahoo! Group and we’ll publish them here on the blog.
In an article in the Sunday edition of the Eugene, Oregon Register-Guard, reporter Mark Baker interviewed Tom Robinson. The article, titled "The reel deal: Here's your chance to learn how to preserve precious old home movies," gives background on the importance of home movies as well as a call to Oregonians to bring theirs out to the Knight Library on the University of Oregon campus this Sunday.
In today’s Monday Platform on SF360.com, Stephen Parr of Oddball Films talks about HMD in general and home movies in particular.
Home movies, or amateur films, were made without any interest in remuneration. People made these films to document their family’s history, vacations — their lives, basically. There is always an element of camp in anything that’s dated, because we’re so fashion-oriented. But there are a lot of other issues that are important and often get overlooked: Who shot the film? It has to do with gender roles. Generally, men would shoot the films. Who gets camera time? Who doesn’t? Oftentimes the favorite child gets shot. Sometimes the patriarch will get a lot of time. That’s a metaphor for the family unit.
Snowden Becker and Rhonda Vigeant are quoted in a August 6 story in the LA Daily News titled History made reel in home movies. Rhonda gives background information on the Newhall, California event, while Snowden describes the greater significance of home movies and talks about some of the films in the collection of the Academy FIlm Archive.
Today’s issue of the Fredericksburg, Virginia Free Lance-Star provides readers with a preview of the Culpeper Home Movie Day. In an article titled Memories at stake: Preserve those precious home movies let’s get reel, reporter Kim Baer talks about the event in conjunction with the opening of the National Audio-Visual Convervation Center in Culpeper next year, while also using yet another reel/real pun in the title of the article.
The celebration of Home Movie Day at Duke University is previewed in a August 7 article posted to the website of the Duke Office of News & Communication. The article, titled “Get Out Your Old Films,” features comments from host Karen Glynn and volunteer Arani Roy
“Strangers comment on each others’ films, ask questions in the dark, and ooh and ahh over the visual record of family and community life flickering across the screen,” Glynn said. “The act of viewing home movies for four hours on a hot August afternoon once a year generates community.”
The previews keep rolling in: TheState.com, “South Carolina’s Home Page,” features an article in today’s edition titled “Reel life,” a preview of Home Movie Day 2006, with comments from volunteers Kelly Cornwell and Joshua Mabe.
A Home Movie Day favorite for Mabe is of Blue Ridge Mountain landscapes that someone filmed during a Tweetsie Railroad ride.
Mabe also learned that bears show up with some regularity in home movies. “I don’t know why,” he added.
Home Movie Day in the Upper Connecticut Valley is getting its fair share of press coverage on the eve of the event. First, a story called “Historical treasures to be discovered on Home Movie Day” in the Connecticut Valley Spectator, and then an audio interview on New Hampshire Public Radio with organizer Bruce Posner, which you can listen to here. Well done to John and Bruce for getting the word out!
HMD 2006 is a wrap, and we look forward to hearing reports from around the country. Also, be sure to check out the Home Movie Day group on Flickr, and if you’re a Flickr user and have photos of your event, become a member of the group and add your pics to the pool!
The reports from Home Movie Day events around the world are starting to come in, including a recap in words and pictures from Leo Enticknap and the Northern Region Film & Television Archive HMD at the University of Teesside. Leo writes that the event had a total of 23 visitors, who were treated to screenings of every format from 8mm to 35mm.
Kathleen Fairweather, Chris Stewart, Cary Cox, JaJuan Johnson, “and all the fine staff at the Butler Center and Central Arkansas Library System” write in to report on Home Movie Day in Little Rock, Arkansas:
Greetings From The Natural State!
What A HMD turnout we had today! More than 80 people showed up on a sunny Saturday afternoon in downtown Little Rock to watch a full two and one half hours of Arkansas’ finest home movies. Most of the footage was from the 30s, 40s and 50s and we even had a few celebrities on screen as Ellie May, Jethro and Granny from the Beverly Hillbillies were caught on camera in Batesville, Arkansas, sometime in the 1960s.
I gave a talk on home movie care and preservation and the importance of donating to your friendly, neighborhood archive and the whole thing was picked up by two television stations, our local channels and affiliates for ABC and CBS, as well as NPR. A Few print reporters were there as well, so there should be some good coverage tomorrow.
The folks at the Butler Center and Encyclopedia of Arkansas at the Central Arkansas Library have decided to build a Home Movie Archive from this collection, and will carry the preservation torch forward to Home Movie Day 2007.
And we couldn’t have done it without your support! You’re creating a lasting legacy of movies that folks here really care about.
Thanks Home Movie Day People!
Snowden sends word of the Austin HMD event on behalf of Anne Shelton, the official HMD coordinator, and deems it a great success.
Howdy!
The first-ever Austin Home Movie Day was an unqualified success. We had about 50 people show up during our two-hour screening window, and nearly a dozen people brought films to show. The local NPR affiliate, KUT, ran a nice spot on us this morning (great soundbite from Caroline Frick there, citing the Zapruder film as a “Texas home movie”!). Listen online.
And we also got a blurb on the popular local-scene blog, www.austinist.com. Headline: “Hey Bobby! Film my butt!” Guess they took the spirit of that John Waters quote to heart…and fortunately we didn’t have any Beavis and Butthead types show up on the strength of it.
Highlights of the films we showed: Footage of the UT campus in 1946, including shots of girls dashing for the campus boundaries, stripping off their coats to reveal the shorts that coeds weren’t allowed to wear on university grounds back in those days; several years’ worth of local parades, family Christmases and Easters brought by Austin filmmaker and artist Luke Savisky and his brother, in which their older sisters (who were NOT twins) could be seen wearing identical outfits and unwrapping identical dollies under the tree year after year; shots of the aftermath of a flood in Lampasas, TX, in 1957, which was one of those natural disasters that never made the national newsreels, but devastated the local community and lives on in regional memory; and another reel from the collection of the woman who took the UT-campus footage—one which she shot in November of 1963. That reel came back from processing with a note from Kodak saying that if the film included footage of President Kennedy’s assassination, the owner should contact the FBI immediately. Caroline Frick made a photocopy of the letter for the Texas Archive of the Moving Image’s files, and I’ll try to get a scan of that up for everyone to see this week…
The films that were brought were predominantly 8mm, with a little bit of Super8 and one or two reels of 16mm. No novelty formats for us this year, but perhaps the greatest part of doing a first-time HMD in Austin is that the local crew were already planning for NEXT year’s event before we’d even had this year’s. We’re thinking of things like a week of feature-film screenings relating to home movies, lectures, workshops, the whole nine yards.
This year I ended up being the primary projectionist, which was a new experience for me—having always been running around too much at the LA events to be in charge of a machine. Fortunately, we had NO technical difficulties this year (aside from a lack of regular 8mm splicing tape, which made things a difficult for the prep folks, who coped with the problem manfully!). It was truly cool to experience the magic of making pictures appear out of thin air, I have to say. And I realized that the projectionist gets the luxury of SEEING almost every film that gets shown, which is a treat!
All in all, this was one of the best Home Movie Days I’ve participated in, and I can’t wait for next year (but I guess I say that every year)…
Check out volunteer Bratten Thomason’s pictures of the event.
The New York Home Movie Day got a nice write-up in The New York Sun today. Katie Trainor, Dan Streible, and Andrew Lampert are all quoted in the piece.
Other film scenes that afternoon were of a cat being petted; a dog being washed; a baby in a crib watching an overhead moving mobile; footage (some underexposed) of a recent wedding near Buffalo, N.Y.; film of Central Park that had been found in a projector being thrown out; and scenes of Nantucket. All the while, Mr. Lampert interjected various observations and comments, such as, “Tricycles are a very popular subject” in home movies.
Jean P. Fisher of the News and Observer wrote an article titled “Home movie buffs revere the reel thing” (there it is again…) covering this year’s events at the North Carolina State University. Organizer Martha Orgeron is interviewed, and the piece also features a number of photos of Skip Elsheimer, Devin Orgeron, and others.
Film archivists at each gathering inspected the movies to determine their condition and projected those that were in good enough shape. The idea is to remind people of the historic and sentimental value of such films and give families the chance to view movies many have not seen in decades.
One man attending the Raleigh event brought in film shot at Yankee Stadium in the 1930s. He said Lou Gehrig played that day. A younger man, born in Taiwan, shared a film of his third birthday in 1979, showing his extended family sitting down to a meal of sushi and Chinese hot pot, a kind of fondue.
Tom Robinson reports on the busy Home Movie Day in Eugene, Oregon.
About 200 people showed up at the University of Oregon’s first HMD yesterday, many carrying collections of film. We attribute the big turnout to the heavy media coverage; both local television stations sent film crews in advance and gave us coverage on all Friday newscasts, complete with old home movie samples. The newspaper put us on the cover of the living section and the top of the front page. The posters helped too.
We had three screens simultaneously showing films, three intake tables and an army of helpers. The projectors were arranged in the center of a screening room, with screens on three different walls. One screen had two 16mm Eiki SSL projectors, the other two screens each had both regular 8mm & super 8mm projectors. We were loading film on one projector while the other was playing movies. For most of the afternoon we were able to have all three screens going at the same time. Two of the three super 8 projectors failed in the first hour, one burned up a motor, a clutch failed on another. Other than that everything worked well.
We did not have advance intake. Patrons checked in with a receptionist, who directed them to the proper intake table (different film gauges). Intake would put a stickie on each film reel, can or box labeled with the family name. The intake person would then give the films back to the patron and a “patron relation liaison” would escort the patron to the projection room, where there was a second intake table next to the projectors. Patrons would put a few films in the “inbox”. As projectors became available for loading, projectionists would ask the projection intake person for a new reel of whatever gauge film. Each projectionist would announce the family name on the film at the point of loading the projector, saying which screen the film would be on, so the family could get to the area near the screen that was going to show their film. The projectionist would again announce the family name at the beginning of each film, so people would know when their films were starting. Patrons were always in possession of their film and the only time we had it was when we were projecting it. There were no claims of lost film, etc.
Next year we will do a more thorough job of examining film at intake to determine whether it is wound on the patron’s reels properly, that it is heads out, emulsion out, that regular/super 8 is on the correct spindle size reel, leader (if any) is securely fastened and that the film is not broken in the middle. Our top problem (aside from being mobbed) was old splices falling apart during projection; we had to have splicing blocks at the projectors and used them quite a bit. Our projectionists (including yours truly) worked non-stop. next year we want to have to have matched sets of four projectors, dedicated regular 8 and dedicated super 8, and two extra projectors for motorized rewinding. We want four screens next year, with a set of small gauge projectors for each of the 4 screens. And we want more of those little gooseneck clamp-on lights to thread projectors with. and a string of xmas tree lights around the perimeter of the projector area, since patrons coming in from the street have to take time to adjust to the dark of the screening room and a few couldn’t see very well.
Probably the oldest HM was 1927, a double sprocket 16mm with vs, brought in by a very elderly lady, showing her as a little girl. We probably screened about 50 movies, the vast majority being evenly divided between regular 8 and super 8, reel sizes from 3” to 7”, and there was a surprising amount of 16mm. We had people crying, whole families came in together, a tv crew filmed inside the event for the evening news, it was a full house and our hands were full from beginning to end.
Ashley Maynor gives an in-depth report on HMD Richmond and on her own home movie preservation efforts in her blog, Preservation Project. Organizers Jere Kittle and James Parrish get her kudos for running the event and providing advice.
About a dozen or so individuals came by between 10am and 1pm with their home movies in tow. One individual had films from the 1940s that she had inherited but never seen, another had several “found” 8mm reels with no idea what was on them. Yet another brought in a 16mm film she had completed in art school, but couldn’t remember what she had shot. Jere and James meticulously inspected a reel from each person in order to detect any damage, repair splices, add leader and prepare for projecting that afternoon in the library auditorium.
Lia Friedman sends news from San Diego, where she and Steven O’Riordan hosted their first Home Movie Day at the Geisel Library’s Seuss Room on the campus of the University of California, San Diego.
We received almost exclusively 8mm from the public the day of the event. We had articles in a couple of small community papers, and listings in the large weekly and daily. We had two dedicated projectionists and two other librarians doing intake and talking to people about preservation/transfer/storage issues. We screened 16 and super 8 films from our collection in between films and saw around 35 people throughout the day (our event ran from 2-5:30). We had all of the projectors going at once on one giant wall and screen, while we watched we ate cracker jack & drank apple juice. The highlight was probably the gentleman who brought in his front line footage from Korea. We all gathered around him as he narrated what was going on, pointing out people and places—“those hills were full of commies…” Pretty amazing…We can’t wait for next year!
Home Movie Day Chicago 2006 was relatively slow as far as home movie submissions, but come show time, the room filled up. Although I thought that we may have not gotten the word out well enough, there was a healthy audience (70-75) for the show who came without films. We started out with an EBE 16mm film called “The City,” an early 1960s film that showcased Chicago by following a white guy with a deep voice as he sped around the city in his convertible. Always the profile shot of the guy with a strong jawline whipping along Lake Shore Drive. From there we went into all home movies. Someone submitted some travel New Orleans and New York footage circa 1950s? Jeffrey Martin came in with footage of an intimate party of geriatrics in someone’s living room, complete with cocktails and explicit sexual groping. There was a baby with a cigarette in another home movie, but the highlight of the evening was the Vietnam footage that one Chicagoan vet had brought to the archive at an earlier date. He was never in combat, but was able to capture the R&R climate. Very reminiscent of MASH actually. BarBQs, beautiful native women, and there was a sequence almost in real time of the donor and several of his buddies plowing through a large Ritz Cracker tin of marijuana. We slowly saw the deterioration of the party go from winks and grins to a couple of the vets wrestling each other in this small room where there are maybe 6 guys slowly getting fried out of their minds. Tim, the donor, gave a dry and hilarious commentary throughout the film.Bingo as always was a success and the music that was played along with the movies was a crowd pleaser. What I took away this year is that this is a concept that is beginning to resonate among the Chicago group that came. There were many repeaters from last year and everyone was genuinely thankful that we put on the event.
Our volunteer crew that ran it are for the most part repeaters as well and totally make the event rock.
Signing off from Chicago
Nancy Watrous
Chicago Film Archives
Even though our business runs on a world wide customer base, the town that we call home is as small-town America as it comes. The rural community of Ashland, Missouri has a population of 3,000. There quite possible may be a gas station, bank, or nail salon for nearly every person, and the “four way” represents to the hub of town. Thus, our Home Movie Day is much different than those held in large metropolis areas with a higher audience. Our Home Movie Day relied on the support of a small, but eager, community.Twenty Home Movie Depot employees gave their time to showcase their craft. Technicians who work with 8mm film, super8 film, 16mm film, 35mm slides, and video tapes all had stations set up in the building. We had home movies playing on every station through the entire afternoon, including super8 film that our mechanical engineer shot last week of a local park. Additionally, we had tables with examples of proper storage containers and labeling devices. I also had print materials containing names and phone numbers of professional labs.
Additionally, we had a children’s corner where we showed old Bugs Bunny and Disney cartoons. One of our employees created a cartoon drawing of “Vinnie” the film reel, for kids to color. Vinnie was a smashing success.
We had several computers set up to view the Home Movie Depot Archive, a streaming video collection of home movies, donated by Home Movie Depot customers. The archive is fully searchable and includes a comment function. Thanks to the search function, a few savvy guests figured an easy way to win at Bingo.
Finally, we rented an old time popcorn machine and gave away free popcorn and soda. I stand hardily by my belief that the best way to capture an audience is to feed them. As of Saturday, I see no evidence to the contrary.
The day brought a respectable number of guests, but more importantly, it certainly brought the feeling. Towards the end of the day one of our employee’s elderly mother brought in a box of her films to view. We all enjoyed seeing Kenny as a young boy. And while it may take him some time to live down his Halloween costume, all the teasing is in good fun. While I know of a few things to change next year, I’m thankful for the family element that came with this Home Movie Day. Home Movie Day at Home Movie Depot seemed to bring an intriguing blend of old and new, where modern day technology mingled with nearly forgotten traditions.
Laurisa Hinkle
Home Movie Depot
Home Movie Day New Orleans 2006 featured the first ever HMD road trip. Dwight Swanson (Appalshop) and Lauren Sorenson (NYU Moving Image Archiving Program) drove down from Kentucky, met up with Kelli Hicks (Country Music Hall of Fame) in Nashville and they all picked up Brian Graney (UCLA) at the New Orleans airport.
Since we were coming all this way we figured we should do more than one event, and we really wanted to get the New Orleans filmmaking community involved. So the Friday night event was held at the Zeitgeist Multi-Disciplinary Arts Center, a great place just outside of downtown. We termed the program “Personal films by local independent filmmakers” since we didn’t want to restrict them to showing their home movies (though some did). The program was curated by Helen Hill, a New Orleans animator who had screened her flood damaged home movies at the recent Orphan Film Symposium. She has been displaced and living in Columbia, SC since Katrina so this was her first time back since she returned last October to save her things from her flooded home. It was a great program and well attended. Highlights included Helen’s home movies and a video made from them by Courtney Egan, weaving Helen’s water-damaged, pre-Katrina footage with video shot from the same POV after the storm; George Ingmire’s incredible video assembled from recent transfers from his grandfather’s home movie collection—footage of his son, born with Down Syndrome, shot from infancy into teens, with a voiceover left behind by his grandfather; a video diary by a 10-year-old girl named Kalypso (available online here), and Zeigeist owner Rene Broussard’s raw video footage shot from the window of his car, radio turned up loud, of the plethora of advertising signs from the insurance companies, contractors, real estate companies, and sign makers, already in place to welcome back NO residents on the first day authorized for their return.On Saturday afternoon we headed to the French Quarter for HMD proper. The venue was the “Counting Room” of the Historic New Orleans Collection, a gorgeous room in a structure originally built by a prosperous merchant and trader named Jean François Merieult in 1794-95. Attendance was modest and not all contributions were in condition to be projected—not because of any Katrina-related damage, but because of more common types of deterioration. Two projector-ready collections included one man’s footage of his son’s jazz band playing at the 1984 New Orleans World’s Fair and Eisenhower’s visit to the city on the sesquicentennial of the Louisiana Purchase. We also had the opportunity to screen the many films that were submitted for the occasion by archives in New Orleans and around the nation. From the Academy Film Archive, a clip from the Newcomb Condee Home Movie Collection was screened, shot on a 1927 visit to New Orleans shortly after the Great Mississippi Flood of that year. David Weiss of Northeast Historic Film generously donated to the Historic New Orleans Collection a reel of 1952 Mardi Gras Kodachrome footage. And the Historic NO Collection and Louisiana State Museum screened recent preservation work from their collections, including a gorgeous jazz funeral and footage of 1965’s Hurricane Betsy. Colorlab had also put us in touch with a woman from the Mississippi coast whose home movies had been partially destroyed during her house’s flooding. George Ingmire returned from the previous night with another reel from his grandfather’s collection, showing silkworms at work—unfortunately in no condition to be rojected, to our collective disappointment. Helen Hill premiered a new Super8 home movie of her pre-verbal son demonstrating his skill with sign language.
Through it all, the legendary London-born New Orleans jazz drummer/singer Barry Martyn and his combo accompanied the films, most often with music (“Stormy Weather” for hurricane footage!), but also by chiming in to identify old friends they spotted among the musicians on parade in the footage on screen.
The crowd size was a disappointment (and probably due to the difficulty of parking in the French Quarter, a problem which we knew about but decided to risk anyway), but there were many, many wonderful things beyond the few hours of the screening for those of us who made the trip. Being able to spend time with the local people and hearing their stories was very moving (especially having a breakfast picnic on the porch of Helen Hill’s destroyed house). Every single person we dealt with was unbelievably friendly and giving and they kept thanking us over and over for coming down. Ultimately I think the best result of the weekend for HMD was the contacts we made with the filmmakers and the archives. It feels very likely that they’ll continue with Home Movie Days in the future, and we’ll really get a handle on how much of the city’s home movie legacy is still in existence.
Many thanks due: John Lawrence and Stasia Wolfe of the Historic New Orleans Collection, Courtney Egan, Helen Hill, Rene Broussard, and the Louisiana State Museum.
On Friday, August 25, Brooklyn’s Rooftop Films presents “real life, straight up” with Home Movies, screening on the lawn of Automotive High School (50 Bedford Ave, between N. 12th and Lorimer, Williamsburg, Brooklyn). Eschewing the fancy, flashy, and high-concept, the 21 short videos in this program take their cues from home movies in favoring “the direct approach, the personal story, the raw humor, humiliation and humanity of real life.” The screening begins at 9:00 pm but get there at 8:30 pm for a live music lead-in from ULI. Tickets are $8.
For complete program information, click here.
Since in Italy August is the time of vacation and the big cities are completely empty, every year we tend to change the HMD location and move from Bologna to other places (little town or villages in areas quite crowdy in the Summer), and everytime we organize the HMD with the strong collaboration and support of local partners. It works, for many reasons: the communication is by the usual media, but also word by word, the idea is to realize an event involving everyone. We would like to involve the people of all the ages. This approach could help also to develop local projects in rediscovering and collectiong the private film heritage in the future.The 4th (our 3rd) edition took place in San Gimignano, a beautiful village near Siena. The location in the morning and in the afternoon was the Piazza del Duomo itself, the centre of the medieval city. It was easy that many people, not only inhabitants with films, but also tourists and curious stopped there to see and ask. Then we had the chance to explain to many people during all the day the importance of saving the old memories. Of course, people came also with their films. From San Gimignano countryside (Val d’Elsa) and elsewhere. And like usual there was the exhibition of old apparatus (cameras and projectors) by the collector Antonio Pignotti.
In the evening the screening took place at Teatro dei Liggeri (a restored theatre of XVIII century), instead of the plein air screening in Rocca di Montestaffoli (because the weather was getting worse). We selected around 15 films collected during the day. The audience was 150 people.
Anyway, the first screening was a film we took from Archivio Nazionale del Film di Famiglia:
“Nozze d’argento” by Giuseppe Lenzi. Shot in 1957 in Siena and San Gimignato. A visit of an old couple for the celebration of the 25th year of marriage (nozze d’argento), filmed in 8mm b/w by their son. With sound added, a poetic view of a special moment of the family life. Lenzi is one of the most interesting amateur filmmakers discovered by Associazione Home Movies in these years. His way of filming and editing is remarkable, the subjects are always family events and he is a poet of everyday life. Now his films are also documents of details completely disappeared.
After that, various screenings. Among them, a marriage filmed in 1953 in color 16mm. The husband was a partisan and the filmmaker a relative or a friend came back from America with a camera, as the old man says… Just to contextualize the evening, he is also the father of the mayor of the city (present at the screenings). Other images filmed by American tourists in 16mm in the 50s, they are not Yankees, but immigrants, just people from San Gimignano came back to their village many years after to see what happened in the while and what changed. Other immigrants: Tuscan people moved to South Africa in the 60s, their life in the Apartheid society filmed in 8mm. Then some classic stuff in 8mm and Super 8, a real fun for the audience (especially carnivals, a religious procession carrying the mummy of Santa Fia and children dressed in white, those now are old women).
At the end, special screenings of mysterious films: diaries of a family in a 16mm reel (in 20s and 30s), the new years day of 1942 in a house of a fascist man and an “adieu” with an amazing close-up soldier kissing a girl before leaving in 1941 (someone said “he seems a vampire”).
Best Regards,
Paolo Simoni
Archivio Nazionale del Film di Famiglia
Paolo also sends this mp3 link to an interview conducted for an Italian radio program of the public Australian broadcaster SBS, featuring himself and Australia’s National Film and Sound Archive Director Paolo Cherchi Usai, explaining why home movies can be much more than a family treasure.
Following last week’s HMD Boston event, tireless home movie champion Liz Coffey took the show on the road yesterday for a second event in Providence, Rhode Island. The Providence Journal joined her at the Rhode Island Historical Society to cover the state’s first ever Home Movie Day.
“These films can tell us so much that’s important about the people and daily life of our state,” Bernard P. Fishman, the historical society’s executive director, said before the screening in the group’s Aldrich House headquarters, on Benevolent Street.Two dozen people sat under a chandelier inside a high-ceilinged room in the Federal-style house to watch silent films on everything from U.S. fighter planes flying in formation during World War II to a group of Rhode Island Red chickens pecking around on a farm in North Attleboro. In the background during part of the screening, a Peggy Lee LP played on a gramophone.
The oldest film was from 1927 and captured a family visiting the Lincoln Park Zoo, in Chicago, and ice-skating on a frozen pond nearby. The most recent was shot last year by Liz Coffey, the society’s film archivist, during her vacation in Spain.
Read the complete article here.
Pro8mm’s Rhonda Vigeant reports that the 2nd annual Home Movie Day in Santa Clarita was a fabulous time. “I was surprised how many people who attended the event last year came again,” she says. “There seemed to be an instant sense of connectivity between the returning participants.”
Everything ran smoothly for the audience of 50, thanks to the now-seasoned event volunteers and to the top-notch projectors donated for the day by Paolo Davanzo of Los Angeles’ Echo Park Film Center. While nearly half of attendees came with film, by all accounts the showstopper was a 400 ft. reel of Super8 shot in the 1960s on the tiny island of Falalop in what is today the Federated States of Micronesia. The reel was brought by a woman who had grown up in Falalop and acquired the film recently through a family member who had received it years ago as a gift from the island’s school principal.
Nancy Urbanski writes in with a report from Orland Park, as well as two articles from the local press and somephotos of the event from the Daily Southtown.
Our first HMD day held at the Orland Park Library was successful. We had film inspection from 11:00 with the film showings beginning at 12:30. We were a bit swamped at 11:00 with everyone wanting to talk to the archivists. Nine people came through the door almost at the same time.
Some brought films for inspection but could not stay for the showing; others left their films at home and just wanted some advice on caring for their films, transfer rates, etc. Still others brought their films for inspection and showing and kept us busy for the hour and a half.
Our program started at 12:30 with Larry Urbanski giving a presentation about proper film care, some movie day history, and format obsolescence. We concluded the talk with audience questions.
We screened 16mm, Reg. 8, and Super 8 home movies. They ranged from the 1940’s to the 1970’s. We screened three 16mm 400 ft rolls from a family that had 12 children: 10 girls and 2 boys. The colors were brilliant and the amateur filmmaker took great care to get shots of faces which makes for an interesting film. Shots were of New Years Eve parties (1958), babies with banners bringing in the New Year, Christmas, and Easter outfits. There were shots of Chicago’s South Side, churches, weddings, local now closed amusement parks, and babies. The people who brought the film told the audience about what we were watching. We had 20 people for the film showings. We were competing with beautiful weather for the event. We served popcorn and lots of theatre candy (Raisinettes and Milk Duds, etc.). We ended at 4:00 but we would have liked to screen more films.
Our only problem was the room could not be made dark enough; a light could not be shut in the back of the room for safety ordinance causing the 8mm gauge film to be too light.
All in all a great, fun-filled day.
Home movies aren’t just for the family
Sunday, August 6, 2006
By Michael Drakulich Staff writer
Home movies aren’t just memories put on celluloid. Film archivists say they’re history.
Orland Park will take part in the annual Home Movie Day next weekend, in which film archivists and amateur moviemakers worldwide celebrate the value of home movies from decades gone by. The movies were shot with 8 or 16 mm film.
The event will be hosted locally by film archivists Larry Urbanski and his wife, Nancy, of Moviecraft/Urbanski Film.
The Urbanskis have cataloged more than 150,000 films, including home movies, television shows, educational films and movie outtakes.
The couple also help agencies properly store and preserve their own films. Larry Urbanski said Home Movie Day was initiated in 2002 by a group of film archivists who were concerned about what was happening to home movies shot on film during the 20th century.
Many feared they were being discarded because people no longer had projectors or thought they eventually would become too fragile to view.
So archivists created the day, which is celebrated every Aug. 12, to convince people there is still value to those old home movies.
Home Movie Day encourages people to get out their home movies shot on 8 mm, Super 8 and 16 mm film and make them available for viewing.
“Archivists have been surprised by the success and participation,” Urbanski said. “It’s grown in numbers each year and has even caught on in Japan and the United Kingdom.”
The day isn’t just about viewing home movies, he said. It’s a chance for people to learn more about preserving them and perhaps transferring them to other common forms of media such as DVD.
“Everyone has that stash of movies in the attic or a shoebox,” Urbanski said. “If you have something historically relevant to your family and actually to history in general, they should be preserved.”
Urbanski says anyone interested in dusting off their movies can bring them to the Orland Park Public Library at 11 a.m. Saturday.
Archivists can check the films for damage and make them ready to beshown in a projector.
Or, people can arrive just to learn about transferring to other media and preservation.
Film screenings will run from 12:30 to 4 p.m.
Home movies transport viewers back in time
Sunday, August 13, 2006
By Kristen Schorsch Staff writer
During a beauty pageant in the 1950s, red sashes and white underwear were the only items covering a handful of Diane Aalders’ 12 siblings.
One by one they posed for the video camera, hoping to be crowned the next beauty queen or king at least of their Chicago home.
When out on the town, her sisters donned dresses, hats and white gloves, a staple of that era. Her brothers sported suits.
The silent 16 mm film that captured these memories and more brought a smile to Aalders’ face. She hadn’t seen her family’s home movies since she was a child.
“It’s just pretty neat,” said Aalders, 43, of Evergreen Park.
People worldwide gathered Saturday to celebrate Home Movie Day, a tradition that began in 2003 to save the countless amount of reels of home video shot during the 20th century, film archivist Larry Urbanski said.
At the Orland Park Public Library, about 10 people transported back in time to watch the silent stories of their families and friends. The scene was like a movie theater, with plenty of popcorn and Milk Duds to go around as the crowd watched their memories on the big screen.
Before the viewings, Urbanski offered tips on how to preserve films, such as storing them in canisters with holes to allow air to flow through.
An 8 mm film helped Stan and Teresa Barnat, of Summit, retrace the steps of their wedding day the snowy morning of Nov. 26, 1949.
“There’s my old Nash, wow!” said Stan Barnat, 85, referring to his 1949 green car.
The couple drove the vehicle to Key West for their honeymoon. Teresa Barnat, 78, remembered the backseat converted to a bed.
Clip after clip, the Barnat’s relatives and friends came to life as the projector gargled in the background.
“My mother and father, oh boy,” Stan Barnat said.
“My sister,” his wife said.
Moments later, a small child popped up.
“That little girl is a grandmother herself now,” Teresa Barnat said.
As the group watched several films, they asked questions about particularly scenes or made comments about how times have changed.
The event was a first for the Southland, said Urbanski, of Orland Park-based Moviecraft and Urbanski Film.
“It’s funny how everybody gets into each other’s movies,” he said. “It’s like it becomes a community event.”
Kristen Schorsch may be reached at kschorsch@dailysouthtown.com or (708) 633-5992.
Ruta Abolins sends in reports from the Home Movie Day events held on three days in three cities in Georgia, Athens, Butler, and Columbus.
We did three HMDs this year, each on different days, two being on the road: Athens, GA; Butler, GA; and Columbus, GA. In Athens we had plenty of volunteers and more equipment than we actually needed. For the road trip events there were six of us participating, including our development officer, Chantel Dunham, who had arranged those two events. We drove a University of Georgia van and took along a reduced lot of supplies to lighten our load (though we forgot extension cords, study lamps, and a flashlight, but it turned out our venues supplied them for us).
Athens August 12
We held this event at the public library because of its central location and ease of public parking. We had drop-ins throughout day with about 13 people showing up, six who brought film and the rest who just watched. We had 8mm, Super8, and DVD and no 16mm which was surprising. One woman, a filmmaker, brought in the DVD she made as her senior thesis using hundreds of reels of home movies she purchased from eBay. We then watched several of the reels she used to create her final project.
Butler August 15
Butler is a very small rural community in southwestern Georgia where we were hosted by one of the members of the University of Georgia Libraries’ Board of Visitors-the fundraising group for the libraries’ special collections. The board member who lives in Butler, Eloise Doty, found our venue, fed us, and gave us a place to stay. She arranged for our event to be part of her local historical society’s meeting which guaranteed an audience of 50 people and fit in nicely with the historic aspect of home movies. The event was held in a large, nearly new school auditorium which serves all the schools in the area and which was very well set up. Eloise took in some film and videotape for us in the week prior to the event so we could start inspecting it. At the event, one of the VHS tapes we decided to start with (to give us more inspection and prep time after setup) was of a 1950s Butler parade. By coincidence, one of the 16mm reels we prepared and then showed was of the same parade. The VHS transfer was okay, but when we showed the 16mm Kodachrome footage of the parade, it looked gorgeous. It was a nice illustration of the staying power of film and how much better it looks than VHS. The highlight of the event was listening to all the people in the audience commenting on community members in footage that was over 50 years old, especially the 2-year old spraying his relatives with water from a hose who is currently the sheriff. Refreshments were served afterwards in the lobby which gave us a chance to mingle a bit with the audience.
Columbus August 16
We had another library board member, Warren Foley, sponsor this event, and he found and paid for the venue, in this case the theater in the Columbus Museum. The museum has free parking and is well located in town, so it was a good location for the event. It was a dream to set up there because it was a very nice theater and we had loads of help from the museum staff. We heard they had mentioned the event on the local morning tv news so we were expecting a huge crowd which, alas, did not materialize. About four people brought in film and three people came just to watch. Several women in a group took our brochure and handouts because they couldn’t stay. However, to make up for the lack of people in numbers, those who brought film came with large amounts film in 16mm, 8mm, and Super8. We saw gorgeous Kodachrome from the early 1960s of the white sand beaches in Florida and a yacht trip (our board member host’s family trips). We also saw footage brought in by a woman whose mother was the first woman to be licensed as a surveyor in Georgia. This was also the venue where we got our first lot of African-American-taken home movies. A Mr. Thomas had seen the morning news report on tv and brought his Super 8 films from the early 1970s-a wedding, July 4th, his family, and trips to London, Acapulco, and Florida. He was there early and stayed for nearly the entire event. He also ended up donating some of his films
Amy Gallick reports from Home Movie Day in the nation’s capital:
The Washington DC event was once again exciting, fun and rewarding. We had about 45 people, an ideal number for us. With that number, there was sufficient time to answer questions, screen at least one or two of everyone’s films, and show a few items from LC’s collection. We did run over our 4:00 end time, and went to about 4:30 with screenings. Most of our audience found their way to us from our mention in Daily Candy. We had a number of LC staff in attendance because they saw the event announcement in the LC Gazette. Mention in the Washington Post Express and DCist seemed to bring in a number of people, as well.
We had about 18 audience members bring films, plus some of the volunteers brought materials to screen. We had many family films this year — people at home, babies, etc. One of the DC reps, Jennifer Snyder, brought films of her family, who were fond of doing the chicken dance. Lindsay Harris, another rep, showed film of her brother as a baby (and her parents were in attendance to see it). One audience member’s films featured a family playing Twister, and another man’s Christmas film featured a very cool ‘50s robot the likes of which I have never seen. We had a film of children playing on a frozen Lake Erie. Two women brought films of their family that were shot in Sri Lanka.
One of my favorite films was of a Vietnam War protest that was shot on the Mall in DC. Ironically, as we were showing it, an anti-war protest was happening at the very same time on the Mall! Another man brought his 8th grade stop-motion animation project. He had a cassette soundtrack to go with it, but we could not get that to play. His narration made up for the technical difficulties. He gave us an overview of the plot, described that the large clay creature was a monster, and the rest of the people were townsfolk trying to kill the monster. There were many failed attempts at killing it; the best method featured red sharpies that were supposed to be nuclear weapons. Of course, the townspeople eventually triumphed.
Then there was the most memorable film! A woman brought a beautiful travel film of Austria and Hungary (her father is from Papa, Hungary). There were wonderful scenes from a car window driving over a bridge; there were lakes, there were flowers. As we watched, she told us that her mother always said she ate the best chicken in her life while traveling in Hungary. She was staying somewhere (may have been with family) and was asked if she would like to have chicken for dinner. When the mother said yes, the woman went out and killed a chicken and cooked it for them. Our audience member said, “I hope that’s not on this film.” Well, about 5 minutes later, the film cuts to a smiling woman holding a struggling chicken, eventually breaking its neck! There were screams and some laughter (mostly screams) prompting volunteers in the foyer to run in to the theater to investigate. I closed my eyes until I was told it was safe to open them.
This year’s DC event had the greatest number of volunteers we have ever had. I have to thank Lindsay Harris, Jennifer Snyder, Michael Pahn and Dave Gibson for joining early on to help organize. Jennifer was a PR wizard and Dave Gibson programmed all the films we showed from LC’s collection. Lindsay used her connections to get us some other press in the Express, and Michael made our amazing flyers (I’m sending all this to Brian, don’t worry!).
As a great addition, Julia Nicoll and Jake Kreeger from Colorlab volunteered to help after the Baltimore event was postponed. Jake gave a great talk to the audience, showing examples of Colorlab’s work, and Julia and I were the tag-team projectionists. They also provided us with some much-needed equipment. Our check-in and inspection was very smooth this year. We had three people (Jennifer Snyder, Lindsay Harris and volunteer Jennifer Lewis) at checkpoint one, helping people fill out their paperwork. Christel Schmidt and Marlan Green were at table two, and they helped people view their films on a viewer, to pick out what one or two they might want to show. They also answered preservation questions. Then once the film to be screened was chosen, the participant took the film to Dave Gibson and Janet Ceja-Alcala, who did a thorough inspection, added leader, and delivered the films to Julia and me for projection. Albert Mudrian also helped haul things around, work the lights and drive my equipment back and forth to LC. Finally, I would like to thank Mike Mashon for helping us secure the Pickford Theater as our event location and for putting us in touch with the Public Affairs office, and also for working with the LC Police to allow people to leave with their films after the event.
Brigitte Paulowitz sends news of HMD Vienna:
We did have pretty good pre-press announcements, and one of the local TV stations came by for a report. Even though the event was not curated, the TV people wanted to film some “representative” footage, so we started the program with a touristic walk to the major attractions of Vienna in 1958. A few stop motion images of flowers finished the film which was in great shape and beautiful colors (Kodachrome 8mm).
Next we screened a swimming pool scene from the 70s, in which kids forced a woman to swim the lengths over and over again. Our third entry was brought by an art history student who is investigating Zombie appearances worldwide and brought two of the filmic manifestations, which were wildly entertaining. Also, the gentleman introduced them well and explained the dangers of such an undertaking, which were visible in the often shaky camera and dangerously close approach of the zombies. He brought two films, one was – according to his information – shot in Arizona, the other was evidently shot in the Vienna Prater, even though he was trying to convince us that it was once again somewhere in the US.
This was followed by the film of a 12 year old, now in his 30s, who shot some footage in a Safari Park in Gänserndorf, outside Vienna. Next came a more artistic attempt to capture Venice and Vienna, both black and white and colour images of flowers, staircases, objects of daily use, all in all not your typical home movie, from 2002.
After this we attempted to screen a VHS, a great example of MTV VHS aesthetics, but due to its length of 40 minutes did not keep the attention of the audience well so that I interrupted after 25 minutes to a round of applause. I thought it was interesting to a certain degree but as it was mainly footage of 3 guys with a strong sense of self importance on Italian beaches, 25 minutes was probably more than enough of it. We switched back to 1958 – the world exhibit in Brussels which was probably my personal favorite as it showed lots of futuristic architecture, atom models and opened with great footage of the opening fireworks.
The secret highlight for most other people was probably a 16mm b&w film that opened with footage of the Anschluss in a village called Hadersdorf, everbody swore they saw Hitler passing by, but since I was organizing, I really didn’t see that much of any of the films, so can’t confirm. The film had been bought at a local fleamarket, given to a filmenthusiast and preserved by an archive in Vienna, so that what we saw was a brand new 16mm print. The seconds of Nazi footage were followed by shots of a woman in the garden, a woman that seemed to smoke all the time and had short black hair, both things were relativley uncommon in the 30s in Austrian countryside. The reel was probably all that was shot by the family as it continued on into the fifties, always with the woman smoking.
Our bonus track was a film from the early 80s which showed the same Safari Park we had seen before, and even though it was shot by a more professional filmer and a grown up person, it showed the exact same animals doing pretty much the same things.
I did ask somebody to take pictures, but I believe he was so happy just watching films, that he forgot. All in all I’d say the turn up was good considering the space we had. More films would have meant choosing. However, nobody was really happy with the venue (even though the beer was very cheap), so we will definitely have to find something else for next year. Liz’ 101 is right: a bar/pub is not a good place for this. Besides this, I have many more things to do better next year and lots more Zombie films to look forward to! (Somehow maybe the Nazi footage does fall into the same category!!!)
Jimi Jones gives the scoop on Home Movie Day in Champaign-Urbana:
Hello all. Just a note to let you all know how successful the HMD in C-U was. The U of Illinois library and WILL, the local PBS station, co-hosted Home Movie Day. We had an inspection station in the foyer of the WILL building, and we showed films (on 16, 8/S8, and DVD/VCR in the case of telecines) in WILL’s main television studio. I have some pictures on the HMD Flickr group so take a look at them. We had some radio coverage as well as a reporter/videographer from WILL’s local-interest TV program called “Prairie Fire.” The television show has yet to be produced, but will likely air later this fall. We had standing room only capacity for the first couple hours (I would estimate around 60 people) which then petered out by the end of the day (our HMD lasted from 1 to 5). It was a great experience.
