Home Movie Day News

The New Zealand Film Archive will celebrate International Home Movie Day this year with an exhibition and special screening in Wellington.

A self-confessed amateur film buff, Kathy Dudding’s catalogue work with the Film Archive, her previous film making background, and her love of the medium have led to her upcoming exhibition, This is not a family album, a video art installation which opens at the Film Archive mediagallery on 10 August. This exhibition will coincide with a talk by Dudding, a special film screening of home movies and a music event on Saturday 11 August.

For additional information about the Wellington event, click here.

UPDATE: Radio New Zealand’s “Arts on Sunday” program featured a segment on the Wellington Home Movie Day this week.

Home movie cameras, projectors, and accessories incorporate some of the niftiest industrial design features ever, not to mention great packaging.

Continuing a long (OK…two-year) tradition, our pal Bohus Blahut is counting down to Home Movie Day this week on the Retro Thing blog, which celebrates “vintage gadgets and technology.” Each day they’ll feature a cool new pic of a home movie-related object…

Can’t wait for a new one? Check out the posts from last year:

Looky Movie Camera Toy Kaleidoscope - 1969

Slate Your Movies - Just like the Pros!

Home Movie Titling Sets

Home Movie Music Records

3D Bolex 16mm Movie Camera

Retro Thing: Film

They do everything right:

They have great taste in film, and write about other people’s home movies with sensitivity, insight, and true tenderness. They collaborate with The Internet Archive. They offer people free film transfers in exchange for the right to present the footage on their site (but it’s a non-exclusive license, so they’re not ripping people off). And, of course, they name-check us…

Yup, Lost in Light MIGHT just be our favorite blog ever.

Home Movie Day San Francisco gets a lengthy piece in the San Francisco Chronicle with the head line “Family memories in reel time,” featuring words from organizer Stephen Parr as well as the owners and creators of some interesting home movies.

“People like to think that home movies are just family picnics and that their value is mostly camp,” said archive Director Steven Parr. “But really they are the only moving images made without a financial incentive. While they’re usually of joyous events, I have seen movies from the 1940s of wakes in homes where the body was still there. That had been pretty much an American tradition. People documented the social, cultural and political environment of their time.” The most famous home movie, he points out, is Abraham Zapruder’s 8mm film of President Kennedy’s assassination.

The article is accompanied by video clips of some home movies as well as still images.

North Carolina State University features the Home Movie Day event taking place on their campus on its website, using everyone’s least favorite pun once again, “Keeping it ‘Reel’.”

The news brief is also accompanied by a short informational video about Home Movie Day, shot in HD and looking very nice indeed, featuring words from Skip, Marsha, and Devin, as well as home movie owner Gerry Probert.

Coverage of the NCSU event doesn’t end there, though; local cable news channel News 14 features an interview with organizer Devin Orgeron.

Be sure to watch the in-studio interview and check out Devin’s great projector.

Austin’s Home Movie Day is getting a lot of press this week as well, with a nice piece with Snowden in the Austin Chronicle titled “Pearls on Film.”

Aside from being old-school entertainment, Becker believes that these old films are significant to capturing our cultural history. While archivists and historians rely on journals and documents to uncover the 19th century, the medium for uncovering the 20th century will be film.

“…Children, minorities, and religion are not well-documented in mainstream media, so preserving these films is a way of preserving universal truth about humanity. I call it the ‘you are here’ version of historic documentation.”

In addition to the Chronicle piece, local cable news channel News 8 Austin ran an interview with Snowden; watch the video here.

As the Fifth Annual Home Movie Day approaches, news reports interviewing local HMD organizers and telling the story of the mission and the story of Home Movie Day are popping up all over the place. Here are a few from recent days:

• “Family films leave reel legacy” in the Knoxville News Sentinel

• UIUC’s WILL radio Afternoon Magazine interview, with mp3 and RealPlayer audio links

• Play: New Haven’s Arts & Entertainment Weekly on HMD New Haven and organizer Molly Wheeler

• More press for the NCSU event (wow!): “Time stands still at Home Movie Day” from the Raleigh / Durham / Chapel Hill Independent Weekly

• “Reel life history at Anthology Film Archive’s Home Movie Day,” covering the New York HMD events and featuring Andrew Lampert, from Newsday

More Home Movie Day news keeps rolling in; maybe the world is finally catching on to the magic of home movies!

• An Associated Press wire story by Michelle R. Smith with words from Katie Trainor is making the rounds, from MSN Entertainment News to The San Francisco Chronicle.

• Home Movie Day in Chicago gets a plug from Chicago Public Radio on its “Eight Forty-Eight” program, which features an interview with Diane and Karl Berolzheimer, who donated their entire collection of more than fifty home movies of their family’s life from the 1930–1960s to the Chicago Film Archives .

• The Los Angeles Home Movie Day event, with the public screenings during the day and a special Hollywood Home Movies screening at night featuring “specially selected home movie footage from Hollywood’s Golden Age,” gets a write-up in the Los Angeles Times

Report from Howard Besser, Professor and Director of NYU’s Moving Image Archive and Preservation Program

About 30 participants in the international “Safeguarding Sound and Image Collections” seminar celebrated Home Movie Day in Rio by watching the oldest preserved Brazilian film. “Reminicencias” (Reminicences) is a 1924 home movie incorporating footage of the same family shot in 1909. Rio de Janeiro Museum of Modern Art Cinemateca archivist Hernani Heffner pointed out that the wedding bride in the 1924 footage was a child in the 1909 footage, and that the film was probably made to celebrate her marriage. He also said that this was the oldest preserved motion picture film of any kind from Brazil. The seminar participants from 20 countries discussed the importance of home movies, and the relevance of Home Movie Day to countries around the world.

De Volksrant has posted a three-minute piece about Nederlandse Home Movie Day.

Home Movie Day organizer Jean-Pierre Sens is interviewed, and shows off of the great transfer equipment used to work with the film. Filmmaker Erik Hijweege is also featured, demonstrating a Bolex 16mm camera.

Let the HMD 2007 reports begin… This from Stephen Parr in San Francisco:

San Francisco Home Movie Day Report: Best Home Movie Day Ever

This year’s Home Movie Day in San Francisco was our best ever. Over the past years my efforts to promote the events to residents and caretakers of old San Francisco film history have not been as successful as I would have liked.

San Francisco is a youthful city and most people that live here come from other parts of the country so few people are actually “natives.” The only people that really have an abundance of home movies are older generation native San Franciscans, independent filmmakers and collectors and the occasional neighborhood historian. The only way to really dig up people who have home movies is to get major newspaper press (tough both papers the SF Chronicle and the nearly defunct free Examiner are shadows of what they used to be), local television or write ups in neighborhood newspapers, and through local grassroots organizations. My attempts at contacting many of the local Asian and African American newspapers have always met with a lack of interest.

This year the SF Chronicle finally gave us a huge write up in the Datebook section.) This really drew in the SF and Bay Area natives, as well as a smattering of independent film collectors, obsessive collectors and even a local homeless attendee (he told me he was in the “recycling business”) who managed to mingle well with the diverse crowd. In addition the Associated Press article and the August 6th piece in The New Yorker contributed the the larger than usual attendance this year.

Home Movie Film Clinic

We drew about 35+people and a wide range of films and content. I inspected, cleaned and repaired films from 12-6:30 PM. The films consisted mainly of regular and Super 8mm though a local priest brought in some pristine 16mm films of his family from LA in the 30s. Other films included Roger Brindle’s Super 8mm footage of Vietnam antiwar protests and films from his honeymoon in Waikiki in the 1950s. Other films consisted of Watsonville( A farming community) in the 1930s, New York transplant Linda Lewin’s Super 8mm of the Mummers Parade in Philadelphia and her NYU student film of 42nd Street in the mid 70s “A Taste of Fun City” featuring some X-rated footage inside a Time Square film house.

There were other highlights including a 8mm 1946 wedding film shot in Banff, Canada-not seen by the 80+ year old attendee since since then and Averie Cohen’s middle class Jewish home movies shot in the then suburb of Rye, New York. All participants narrated their films which created a real atmosphere of sharing, congeniality and laughter. At the end of the screening Thomas Matus, a priest living in a local monastery donated his 16mm films of Los Angeles life in the 1930s. The archive will be compiling and transferring his films to several video formats. Later Thomas will assist us in logging and do an oral history for us.

Other attendees made appointments for the coming weeks to discuss donating and or transferring their films to a viewing media. One of the most important things I stressed during the clinic was for people to keep their films and transfer them to several types of media for future migration. There is a tremendous amount of misinformation and I clearly and repeated reeducated many of those who brought films in.

Home Movie Day Screening

We drew about 50 people for our free screening, including many new comers and a few attendees from last year. For the early arrivals we began with a screening of a US Navy film “The History of the Motion Picture” (B+W, 1946) which featured nearly every projection device using film ever ever invented. We screened Kodachrome films of the Jung Family, a Chinese American family from Oakland, a few Ebay finds-the infamous double wedding, shot in Henry Ford’s company town for the working class-Dearborn Michigan, home movies of the San Francisco Centennial, Deer Hunting in the Northeast in 1947 (Since San Francisco is the politically correct capital of vegan land I had everyone hiss and boo BEFORE I screened the film), the demolition of the roller coaster in San Francisco’s famous “Playland at the Beach” in 1956, Kodachrome films from the San Francisco Horsemen’s Association riding through SF Parks in 1947 and 8mm color films from the 1939 San Francisco World’s Fair.

Home Movie Reception

As the screening ended we switched gears, had some refreshments and screened some dvd highlights from “Living Room Cinema”. Guests to our soiree enjoyed food, wine and beverages, compliments of SFMA supporter Heni Martin. Most mingled with the interns and staff of the archive till nearly 1:00AM.

We’re planning another event sometime this year in conjunction with the San Francisco History Association. This time we want to showcase home movies by History Association members.

I was assisted by Robert Chehoski who edited the Quicktimes and scanned the stills for our local press and website, David Gallagher from the Western Neighborhood Association who updated the SFMA website, Bill Proctor who set up the screening room, pulled the films and projectors and manned the archive door for part of the afternoon, Averie Cohen as well as SFMA/Oddball Film+Video interns Betty Tweedy, Stefan Palko, Rae, Brad (From Van Dyke Pajama) and Eric. Thanks to everyone at Home Movie Day Central for your efforts and support in this ever expanding world of Home Movies!

One more mention-thanks to Mike Purcell for his at times awful at times exhilarating punk rock super 8mm film featuring the Dead Kennedys, No Alternative and a host of by now dead SF punk rockers from the late 70s. Your film was a real Home Movie Day treat!

The Hollywood Home Movies event held at the Academy Film Archive in conjunction with Home Movie Day was the occasion of a segment on “Weekend America” on Saturday. Host Bill Radke interviews AFA Home Movie Curator Lynne Kirste as they watch home movies from Alfred Hitchcock, Esther Williams, and others. Listen in Real Audio.

Along with making all the movies they’re famous for, Alfred Hitchcock, Steve McQueen and Esther Williams, among others, all made their own home movies. That’s right, complete with kids’ hijinks, embarrassing moments and boring stretches. Weekend America host Bill Radke takes a look into the home movie lives of some Hollywood legends with Los Angeles Times film critic Carina Chocano and Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science Archives curator Lynne Kirste.

From HMD Rhode Island’s Liz Coffey:

The event was set up through the RI Historical Society, where I used to work. This was our second event there. The historical society did the promo work and had the room set up for us (shades drawn, chairs set up). They had also taken in some films prior to the day of the show and provided popcorn!

I did some film inspecting and Albert set up the projection equipment. RIHS provided a couple of volunteers to check people in.

We started the day with about 20 people all told. We began with the HMD dvd while I was finishing up the film prep work. RIHS started the show with a dvd copy of a local film they had recently preserved, which may or may not have been amateur, from Brown University in the ‘teens.

3 RIHS employees brought their films, and we had submissions from two strangers. The oldest films were from the 1920s, which were a little shrunken, but ran without any problem. The granddaughter of the filmmakers promised to bring the films she made in the 1970s as a kid, Super 8 re-enactments of such classics as Earthquake! She didn’t know she could bring “funny films.”

The newest films were from the 1990s (super 8). One was shot in Rochester during a trip as a prospective student. How he could have decided to live in Rochester for 4 years after seeing that bleak bleak film is beyond me, but it was a very pretty film, none the less.

Of the five submissions, only one set of films was local, from Providence in the 1980s. They depicted a street where the filmmaker worked, and had a lot of nice shots of African American kids playing and various store fronts.

Although the turnout was small, Karen from RIHS managed to attract media in the form of someone from the AP and a local TV station. Karen & I were interviewed for the local news. According to Karen, a “RIHS employee reported seeing the report on ABC 6 on Sunday morning. She said we looked and sounded great and that the whole report was a nice plug for the RIHS and for Home Movie Day.”

Snowden’s event report:

The second Austin Home Movie Day event was a huge improvement over last year’s event, which was itself pretty successful! Our event took place at the Boyd Vance Theatre in the George Washington Carver Museum, which is on Austin’s historic and neighborly East Side. The theater is nearly new, and is equipped with everything you could want—cordless mics, video projector, state-of-the-art sound and lighting boards, lots of folding tables and chairs and extension cords, even a green room where volunteers could put their stuff and go for a soda. We’ve already booked it for October 18, 2008!

Austin was one of the HMD locations that got amazing press this year; we probably owe that at least in part, if not entirely, to our collaboration with the Austin Film Festival. They provided us with a page on their web site, cross-promoted the HMD event with a special “Very Early Works” program of juvenilia by well-known Austin-area filmmakers (sorry, no Richard Linklater or Robert Rodriguez; maybe next year?), and had their PR person, Maria Bergh, work on getting the word out for us, too. We got no less than three local TV segments on HMD (two before the event, one last night during the 10 pm Sports Extra), a nice advance piece in the alternative weekly, and excellent notices from a two of the hippest local blogs. The local NPR affiliate also aired a PSA about HMD that many of my friends and acquaintances heard, although I missed that…and the mayor issued a proclamation officially declaring August 12 “Home Movie Day” in Austin, too. I’m going to get that framed!

With all this press, it’s probably not surprising that we had a really decent turnout. Doors opened at 2:00, and we actually had one couple arrive ten minutes before that, film in hand! At one point, there were almost 60 people in the auditorium—with only about 100 seats, it looked really full in there. Very nice. We got about 75 people all told, and about a dozen folks brought films to show—more than enough to fill the 4-hour time slot we’d reserved in the theater. We had an ample selection of projectors set up—a rank of three (8mm, Super8, and 16mm) down on the mezzanine level, close to the stage and screen, and volunteer/film collector/local multimedia artist Luke Savisky brought his enviably nice 16mm, 8mm, and Super8 units and set up a second station on the upper level of the theater, near the sound board. We were able to run film pretty much the whole time, with occasional breaks to give out Home Movie Day Bingo prizes (the Spongebob Squarepants and Transformers stickers went first, even though we also had $10 Whole Foods gift cards to give out). We also showed a couple of pieces of video including one of the pieces screened at the AFF “Very Early Works” show—a self-portrait in VHS of a teenage girl called “Florence Vandertramp,” which was awarded the “Keep Austin Weird” prize for the day. It is my new favorite home movie and must be seen to be believed.

Highlights of the screening: Mr. Ramon Galindo, who was the hit of last year’s Home Movie Day event with his 16mm homemade horror film from the 1940s, came again this year and brought more of his beautiful film—scenes of a parade down Congress Street in 1964/1965 (shot from a second-story vantage point, affording a perfect view of all the floats and marchers, as well as a clown who pretended to take a dump in a chamber pot in the middle of the street). He had footage on the same reel of a “night parade” on Town Lake, part of an annual event called the Aqua Fest that continued into the 1990s—a spotlit waterskier strapped to a huge kite, boats lit up with garlands of lanterns, and of course fireworks all looked lovely in 16mm black-and-white. Lots of oohs and aahs for that. We were privileged to host not just Robbins Barstow and his lovely wife Meg (who were visiting Austin this week) but their son and daughter-in-law David and Linda, too—David learned filmmaking at his father’s knee, and brought his own Super8 “Robin Hood” film to share. It definitely had the Barstow stamp, not to mention some extremely groovy 1970s fashions, and was enjoyed by all! Robbins signed copies of the DVDs that we had for sale, too—as Robbins “Tarzan” Barstow—and I bet those will be collector’s items someday.

There was dude ranch footage from a volunteer’s parents’ collection (the very concept of dude ranches gets a big laugh in Texas, BTW. The parents were New Yorkers who, smitten with the West, later moved to Arizona), and some really gorgeous long color reels of an Arkansas family in the 1970s with a pretty mom, sporty dad, tow-headed baby, and lots of grandparents and aunts and uncles around, having fun all the time—the guy commented about how lucky he was to have such a happy childhood, and to be honest with you, I can’t remember when I’ve ever met such a nice, well-adjusted, friendly guy. We also got several reels of Super8 footage shot within the last five years—one guy had shots of a flea market in Berlin and a guy beat-boxing on a park bench there; another had documented the scattering of his grandfather’s ashes at sea in his favorite fishing cove in Mexico. (I’m noticing that the cool thing now is to claim that YOU were the person who bought “the absolute last reels of Kodachrome film available.”) Home Movie Day Bingo was, as always, a huge hit—it got people asking things like “Is that an aunt? I need an aunt!” during film of a family gathering, and sparked lively debate about whether the cake at a christening counted as a birthday cake. People stayed for hours and seemed to enjoy every minute.

This town has a vibrant community of archivists and film lovers, and the local support for this event all came together in a great way yesterday. We got Whole Foods to donate $100 worth of gift cards—one $50 and five $10—so we raffled off the big one along with some copies of the DVD and some gift certificates from Home Movie Depot and the local transfer houses. Raffle tickets were free for those who brought films, $1 for those who came to watch—between that, and DVD sales, and a small sign we put up asking for donations to support next year’s HMD (which netted us a $50 check), we raised over $100 for supplies and expenses for the 2008 event!

We had an amazing volunteer crew, too: Anne Shelton, Laurie Thompson, Leanda Gahegan, Mike Wozniak, Susan Rittereiser, Steve Wilson, Megan Peck, Sarah Callahan, Karen Spern, and Luke Savisky all did a little (well, a LOT) of everything throughout the day to make it possible. Ben Grillot and Mat Darby (and me) were the core organizers for the Austin event—a very very special thanks goes to Ben for putting in endless hours of work on this, including setting up the mayor’s proclamation. This was all AFTER he had been accepted to law school in D.C. and realized he wouldn’t even be here to see it happen! What a trooper—he volunteered at the D.C. event, too, so he got his dose of HMD fun on the day of, at least.

Mat Darby, Anne Shelton, and Sarah Callahan deserve special mention for driving all the way up to Dallas and back (6 hours round-trip) to take part in the Sixth Floor Museum’s Home Movie Day event the day before the Austin one. HMD superfan Jackie Stewart, whom we all know from the South Side Home Movie Project, is doing research in Texas this month, by lucky chance. She came out to both events with her husband and adorable kids, too! Caroline Frick lent her 16mm projectors and all the goodwill of TAMI (the Texas Archive of the Moving Image). In addition to the Austin Film Festival and Whole Foods, we had generous support from the UT Kilgarlin Center for Preservation of the Cultural Record and the Harry Ransom Center, the Austin History Center, and the Center for American History—all of whom will, I am happy to think, be pitching in to support us next year.

A bunch of the volunteers went out for pizza and beer after the event—it felt like as tired as we were and as hard as we’d all worked, we didn’t want it to end quite so soon. Happy Home Movie Day, everybody!

HMD VT organizer Gemma Perretta’s report:

We also held the Burlington, VT HMD last Saturday. The event was hosted by Burlington College where I taught a course this summer on the history of amateur film that included a HMD internship for the students.

For Home Movie Day we held an inspection clinic from 9-12. I sat with about 10 people/couples individually and inspected their films and gave them advice. The most commonly asked question was where to have their films transferred and what to do with the films after transfer.

One of the student interns, Paul Elsasser, did his fair share of film inspection as well, while Barry Snyder, director of the film dept., manned the welcome and sign-in table. They started showing up at 8:45am and the inspection went straight till 2:30pm. 12 people/couples total had films inspected of which 3 were not projectable.

Everyone from the community was so happy to have their films inspected. There was great energy and folks were glad to be in a place and around people who care about their memories and can help them to access their films.

I had a great moment with a woman named Angele whose films were in good shape except for being held together with scotch tape. She hadn’t seen her films in 30 years and since we couldn’t put her film through a projector we gently reeled it through a viewer. Upon seeing her baby daughter (now grown with children) and her recently deceased mother she held her chest and had a little cry. It was very touching.

The screening was scheduled from 1-4. Joe Bookchin, prof. at Burlington College, was projectionist and packed in about 14 films into the non-stop 3 hours. We had at least 25 people for the screening. Highlights included:

Three 16mm reels of autumn and winter scenes shot by the Carrolls from Lake Placid, NY from the 1950s. An African photo safari during a peace corps mission in the 1960s, a fantastic student film from the 1970s spoofing a trailer for “Wild Strawberries,” and a women’s march from the 1960s (which looked intense, but showed tame without a soundtrack).

The event was a big success for the college and the community, and has already inspired more support and allocation of resources for continuing film conservation efforts at the school.

Pat Doyen’s report from HMD Rochester:

We had a great Home Movie Day here this year. We doubled our attendance from last year! Thanks to all the volunteers: Ed Stratmann, Nancy Kauffman, Leslie Lewis, Jenn Libby, Charlie Allen, Doug McLaren, Michael Neault, Taylor Whitney, Alex Wagenblass and Albert Birney. Although he wasn’t able to be at the even, Ben Tucker helped out a lot beforehand with organizing the event.

Except for a short break, we showed films continuously from 11pm to 4pm. Highlights include footage of training at the Nigerian Television Authority in 1982, Astro World in Texas in 1963, and color footage of the Hawaiian island of Malaki in the early ‘40’s, complete with graphic depiction of goat slaughter.

We gave away lots of handouts and advice, and many people are already looking forward to next year. Oh, and the date change to the fall seems to be really popular.

Thanks to everyone at the CHM!

HMD Report from Nancy Watrous in Chicago:

Although we had about the same number of people coming to see the screening as the last two years, there were fewer people coming with films, We had about 9 people that submitted films (some had quite alot) and one person who was interested in an inspection of their films, but did not stay for the screening.

Tom Palazzolo kicked off the screening with his Rickey and Rocky, a surprise wedding shower he lensed in ‘71. Other particularly notable footage was some shot on Cine-Kodak Super-sensitive panchromatic film of typical home movie scenes, but one of these sequences was lit with candles, showing off the “…shots that were impossible just a few months ago have now been recorded with amazing clarity and brilliance. Indoor and outdoor scenes at night…at dawn…at dusk…on dull and rainy days—clouds…skies…marine views…foliage—all are clearer, more detailed.” As told by a 1931 Movie Makers article that Dave Drazin gave to CFA about this amazing stock for the amateur filmmaker.

Nick Osborn brought in some late 20s, early 30s footage of Washington DC…street stuff.. Also included in his films were some fabulous Playboy bunny and vacation footage… private parties, etc.

Also re-visited was Pete Bingham’s behind the combat lines footage of leisure and R&R in Vietnam during the early 70s. Footage of a hired band and go-go dancers entertaining the guys gradually escalated into a strip-tease act and inter-active entertainment with one of the soldiers which then culminated at a later date with disturbing footage of a middle-aged prostitute trying to entice off screen soldiers at a rifle range to taste her wares. Vivid historical evidence that informed literature such as Graham Greene’s The Quiet American.

As always, Andy Uhrich, Michelle Puetz, Carolyn Faber, Anne Wells and newcomer Joshua Mabe joined me in operating the show. All pros…

Molly Wheeler reports:

New Haven’s second Home Movie Day was an absolute blast and the attendance doubled since last year. Our venue was the New Haven People’s Center, an old house downtown with hardwood floors, a backyard and windows all around. The day was cooler than previous ones and it made the space really comfortable to be in. One half of the room was comprised of the table with the sign-in information and relevant forms, the inspection table, a television playing the Living Room Cinema DVD, and a long table with educational information and DVDs for sale. The other half of the room contained the projectors, a 70’ x 70’ screen, a table for the film queue and lots of chairs. Drop-off and inspection was from noon-2pm and screenings were from 2pm-6pm. People started to arrive a bit before noon, and had the opportunity to sit with Bruce Manke, our inspector, to discuss and look at their films. People milled around, looked on, read materials, and chatted a lot. At 2pm, we started showing the films and within 45 minutes the place was nearly full, at most there were about 50 people in at one time. We ran into only one projection problem, which was quickly solved by taking out our backup 8mm. We had two of each projector in case we ran into problem. Home Movie Day Bingo was played throughout the day and prized were rewarded. There was a great humor and participation throughout the films being shown.

The day was great, and we were all on a high throughout and into when it was done. The audience was diverse and had been informed of it through various media outlets, proving that we need to continue to blanket print, online, radio and television outlets in years to come. New Haven looks forward to its third Home Movie Day on October 18, 2008.

8mm films: (1)-A woman came with her family, bringing a film in that she had never seen before, shot by her father. It was labeled 1964 and showed an extended family over a few months, including at Christmas time and in the warmer season backyard. She grew up in Baltimore, but didn’t remember the house and guessed it to be Buffalo, where she lived as a very young girl. The funniest part was when a child spills Cheerios on the floor and a woman leans in, picks them up, returns to her chair, and begins to eat them. (3)-An older gentleman, along with his adult son, brought three films that he had shot in the mid-1960s. Shot in Newtown, CT, they showed his children learning to walk and playing on a trampoline. (3)-A woman came in with three films, all 400’ reels from around the 1960s, that showed a cock fight (her father raised cocks, she had forgotten about this and was a bit embarrassed… the audience comforted her…); Carnaval on an island that she didn’t recognize, though her husband likely knew where it was; and another that we only got to watch bit of since she had to go. The Carnaval one was beautiful and I’d like to know where it came from. (1)-Am man brought in film from the late 1960s of him and his friends painting a 1957 Chevy that they called “Black Swan.” The footage is really great and shows the detailing… later the car went to New York for an afternoon and was stolen. It was a really hot car. (3)-Volunteers had three miscellaneous films to show at the end…

Super 8 films: (3)-An 18 year old young man that is going to be an awesome addition to next year’s home movie day, brought in three films from an estate sale in Southington, CT. They showed family vacations, including great footage of boarding a United plane, taking off, flying through the clouds, and landing at LAX to go to MarineLand in Palos Verdes, which is now only a ruin. This footage could be great on a DVD, as an orphan film showing a place that doesn’t exist anymore. (3)-A woman came in with her whole family, her parents the filmmakers included. She brought three films from around 1980. They showed great footage (sometimes slow motion) of her and her siblings jumping a pool; the Cheshire CT marching band; Sequoia National Park and San Francisco, a lot of footage of SF from the perspective the front seat of a car. (1)-Footage of a woman’s husband’s family doing random things around town. (1)-The same man as with the 1957 Chevy film, brought in two other films: one shows an afternoon at Brooksdale Park in CT playing soccer and volleyball in 1975. The other film was among the favorite of the afternoon: a film made between 1975 and 1979 that cuts between two men playing Scrabble and his wife on the beach, all shot from really interesting perspectives. This film should be seen by as many people as possible.

16mm films: (1)-A woman brought in a 400’ 16mm film that documented a few things: Gold Rush Junction with a reenactment of cowboys killing Indians (totally weird); and family life in Woodbridge and Bethany, CT. (1)-One woman brought in footage of her friend’s wedding in Fair Haven, CT. (1)-A woman thought she had her senior thesis film but it was in fact her, from 1976, filming her and her friends hanging out. She used some pretty psychedelic effects and it was the only film in which genitals were referred to.

Kelli Hicks reports from Nashville:

All in all, we had a fine Home Movie Day here in Nashville, TN.

It was a busy day in Nashville with many festivals and events, and it has been hovering around 100 degrees for 2 weeks now, which may have accounted for a lower attendance than I hoped (around 30-40 people), but we never had a lag in the screenings.

The main event was held at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum and was split into 2 parts:

10-noon Question-and-Answer session: Three reps from local transfer facilities sat in along with me and our intern Leah Churner, from the NYU archive program. Since attendance was small, we all sat informally around a table full of examples of film gauges and movie-making equipment. We talked about proper care of film, the difference between digital and film formats, and the ins and outs of the transfer process. I have done this kind of discussion 2 years now, and I think it’s a great way to bridge the gap between the transfer folks and the archivists, especially since my knowledge is more film than digital based.

1-5pm Screenings and film inspection: This went unbelievably smoothly, largely thanks to a great group of volunteers. Some highlights included footage of Elvis Presley on the set of Blue Hawaii (!!), a Mrs. Georgia Homemaker competition, and some wonderful footage of newborn babies and incubator babies shot by a local doctor. While rewinding, we kept things going with a huge pre-prepped reel of the wikki wachee “mermaids” which no one ever seems to tire of watching… (if you don’t know them, I highly recommend getting yourself to YouTube). Doorprizes for movie trivia were provided by a local ice cream maker, the Pied Piper, and the the local arts theatre, the Belcourt.

8-11pm Afterparty: To informalize things a bit, we organized a home movie day afterparty in a downtown art gallery with three screens of pre-prepped home movies going on all night, some kegs of good local beer, and some fine music by local musicians.

All-in-all, a fine event. Thanks to Jamie Moffitt, Leah Churner, Lee Noble, Alan Stoker, Ali Tonn, Emily Happell, and Tom Wills for all the time and effort.

Skip and Marsha report on HMD Raleigh:

Wow! We more than doubled our attendance this year. Thankfully we had many more volunteers and projectors - so things didn’t get too hectic. Thanks to everybody who organized and volunteered for the event: Marsha Orgeron, Devin Orgeron, Germaine Fodor, Tom Whiteside, Dave Zahn, Ty Beddingfield, Jim Haverkamp, Charlotte Walton, Kate Kluttz, Rich Schemitsch, Jessye McDowell and Anna Bigelow.

We had mostly super 8 and 8mm with a little more super 8 this year. There was some more lenticular color footage on 16mm from one of our volunteer’s grandmother’s collection.

Here’s co-organizer Marsha Orgeron’s writeup of the event:

It was really a fantastic day and a very successful event. About 75 people came through Caldwell G107 many of them staying all day to see what people brought. We had a dozen volunteers working the event, mostly from the local arts community (plus Anna Bigelow from Religious Studies).

About 10 minutes before start time, NBC and News 14 showed up and I did interviews with them; their cameramen also stayed to shoot the first part of the event. The News 14 report is airing hourly today; I haven’t seen the NBC report, which probably aired while we were at the event. A reporter from Our State Magazine also attended HMD; he is writing a feature story that will appear the month of next year’s event.

Although most people who came to the event were from Raleigh, we also had people come from Tarboro, Fuquay Varina, Durham, and Garner. Some of the highlights included a man who brought several reels of gorgeous color 8mm film he shot of his fraternity in the 1950s, with some great party footage (the man explained the ritual of pinning to the audience, saying that it wasn’t what we all might be thinking!); a couple who brought their early 1970s super8 wedding footage from New York that they had never seen before; some 1920s footage of motorcycle racing (including clowns and stunts with no helmets!) on a dirt track and some very primitive and scary version of a demolition derby; and some great color footage of a young girl’s red sequined dance pageant at a Sanford elementary school.

We repeatedly heard how grateful people were to have an event like this, to get to relive their old memories and learn how to take care of them.

[Pre-event media coverage online: News 14]

A report from Toronto:

Toronto - Home Movie Day presented by Homemade Movies

Homemade Movies held our Home Movie Day event in a beautiful neo-gothic hall at Hart House in the University of Toronto. Everyone was invited to bring down home movies to the event. (Photos).

We had films from the 1920’s through to super 8s from the 80’s - representing the wide multicultural mix of Toronto. One collection captured family life in the city’s West Indian community and trips back home to rural Guyana. Another film was a sound super 8 brought to Toronto at some point from Germany where it was shot in the mid ’70s. It was of a party at an apartment decked-out in period furnishings that ended with a full-out dance segment. A mother and daughter came with reels shot in Quebec of the daughter as a baby which neither had seen in 30 years.

The event was organized much like Homemade Movies’ ongoing series of b.y.o.h.m. events (bring your own home movies) that we have been hosting for over 8 years. Our Home Movie Day had both a repair clinic - where people were able to look through their collections, get help repairing films and select a reel to show - and a screening.

This is the 2nd year our event was co-presented by the Hart House Film Board and held in one of the halls at Hart House. Homemade Movies has organized an event on Home Movie Day in most of the past 5 years, including holding the first Home Movie Day screening in Toronto in ‘03. This year Siue Moffat and Jonathan Culp did a great job helping us get the word out about the event and on the 11th itself. Thanks again to them and the Hart House Film Board - and to Images, Pleasure Dome & Laura Cowell.

Before we get sucked into planning and organizational activities for next year’s Home Movie Day on October 18, 2008, the Center for Home Movies will have a little bit of time to spend on other activities related to preserving the films we love. One of the projects we’re proud to be involved with in even the smallest way is the ongoing work on Helen Hill’s films. A selection of her amazing work will be preserved and new prints made for a special tribute screening at the Orphan Film Symposium in March of next year.

This is thanks in part to a grant from the Maxine Greene Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded in 2003 that supports “the creation of and informed appreciation of works that embody fresh social visions, that move people to perceive alternative possibilities for the making of humane communities.” Helen’s work was very much in keeping with this mission, and we’re especially glad to see a new grantmaker that is willing to fund film preservation work.

The Orphan Film Symposium has also established a memorial award in Helen Hill’s name to sponsor a new filmmaker’s participation in the Symposium each year. Contributions to the fund are welcome, and will make a lasting contribution to the work of radically independent filmmakers of exceptional talent. If you’ve already made a donation to support Home Movie Day and the Center for Home Movies, but are still looking for a good film-related cause to send a few bucks to, here’s your chance!

Mail checks (payable to: THE NICKELODEON THEATRE) to the attention of:

Susan Courtney, Director

Film Studies Program

University of South Carolina

Columbia, SC 29208