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!