Home Movie Day News

Joe Gardner’s report on HMD in Portland, Maine:

Event Venue: Maine Historical Society

Event time (screening): 1 - 4pm

Event time (inspection): 1 - 3pm

Total Audience: 36

Number of people bringing films: 3

Films screened by Gauge: 8mm: 6, DVD transfer of 16mm: 1

Volunteers: 7 – Steve Bromage, Jane Donnell, Joe Gardner, Jessica Hosford, Gemma Perretta, Karan Sheldon, David Weiss.

Special events/screenings: We showed selections from E.B. White’s home movies, which are held at Northeast Historic Film. The clips were projected from a DVD made from 16mm film. The footage largely took place at and near White’s farm in North Brooklin, Maine from the thirties and forties. White’s granddaughter, Martha White, gave a talk while they ran, commenting on the various people and things seen on screen. E.B. White was usually the one behind the camera, but he was seen occasionally. There was a loud gasp from the audience when a spider appeared on screen. Afterwards, Martha White took questions from the audience.

Press (pre-event and post-event): David Weiss, Northeast Historic Film’s executive director, appeared on the Maine TV talk show 207 to discuss HMD, the E.B. White screening and Northeast Historic Film. It’s online here.

Bonnie Roberts brought in two 8mm films which included 1940s and ‘50s color footage of her great-grandparents in Maine. Coincidentally, her great-grandparents are also the great-grandparents of NHF staff member, Jane Donnell. The films showed footage of a family home that Jane knew very well, and at one point, Jane’s mom (as a child) was shown on screen. Bonnie and Jane had never met before and it was a complete surprise that this connection was discovered.

Tim Findlen of Portland brought in three reels of film show by Al Hawkes, a local music producer. Hawkes’s home movie featured images of a band playing, family skiing and iceskating. Tim has more of Hawkes’s films and plans to make a documentary about Hawkes (who is still alive, but did not attend the event). Other films included scenes of children playing, horse sports, potato fields blooming, waterskiing and farms. The range of years spanned the ‘40s to the ‘70s.

From John Tariot:

Upper Valley Home Movie Day in White River Junction, Vermont

The Upper Valley Home Movie Day held in the studio of the local cable TV channel, CATV 8, in White River Junction Vermont was a success- and was at least in keeping with the turn-out from previous years. We had about 15 or so attendees, half of whom brought films- and, of those, the ones that were screened were almost all Super8- though we had quite a bit of 8mm and some 16mm show up as well. We didn’t get much press coverage this year- a combination of over-taxed organizers and the loss of one of our 2 local papers both played a role. Despite the lack of press prior to the event, turn-out was about the same, as I mentioned, as in previous years.

The press coverage we DID get came out today- better late than never, I suppose- though I would have preferred to get press before-hand. The article is available online.

We had also attempted to do a little “Antiques Roadshow” meets Home Movie Day by videotaping the event for air on local cable- though our attention was really on the films as they came in and answering peoples’ questions- so- this didn’t materialize. If we attempt this again we’ll have to round up volunteers who would be tasked with the video portion of the day’s events alone.

We had support from The Howe Library in Hanover NH, Film & Media Studies at Dartmouth College, and the Jones Media Center of Dartmouth Library, and the Main Street Museum of Art of White River Junction.

Our organizers were myself, Bruce Posner and Sukie Punjasthitkul - who took pictures at the event which are available here.

From Kae Ishihara:

Summary

Weather-wise this year’s HMD was not that great. In Tokyo we had a little rain at night, but our average audience increased to 27 (average capacity of venue was 39). Depending on the venue, the number of films shown varied from six to 15, running costs were from 0 yen to 30,000 yen (average 9,000 yen), and the number of volunteers was from three to twelve. We thank our international guests, Brigitte Paulowitz, John Stewart, and Quentin Turner at HMD Yanesen despite the fact the the event was monolingual. I hope they enjoyed the special home movie time created by our local rep.

We mainly deal with 8mm but HMD Yanesen and Nagoya had one 16mm each from the pre-war era this year. The films HMD Japan is showing are increasingly from the old days. We realised that those venues holding HMD for a long time now have a very strong team of volunteers who do a great job. For the first time ever, HMD Misawa had outside screenings, which went successfully.

Through the mailing list, the reps talked a lot about how to take action against influenza (it was in the flu season, and there was a lot of hysteria about avoiding crowds in the media), and also about copyright, as one of the “best HMD” films had a scene showing a TV broadcasting “East of Eden” (1955).

Publicity

We put the HMD PR Video on YouTube (both original and english subtitled version) as our first attempt and it had over 700 hits. This video was made by our member Mariko Goda, who has been making our “Adopt-a-Film” PR for a long time. All in all, we have to admit that this year was a bit quieter on the media coverage side. HMD Misawa and Hirowaki had big articles in the local newspaper after the event, and HMD Nagoya was successfully introduced in advance in Asahi Newspaper with a long interview with the rep, Satoe Tamura. Everyone loved this article as it explains how much fun she is having through the HMD activities and naturally shows the wonderfulness of film preservation. Eventually HMD Nagoya had over 55 in the audience, which was a record for them.

We got really excited when a passionate publicity person from Fujifilm Photomuseum came to visit us about their participation to HMD well in advance, in connection with their exhibition “Nostalgic Home Movies ― from the Zoetrope to Single 8 Film.” Unfortunately they did not do any special events related to this exhibition, and their ultimate decision was to pull out of HMD. I felt that in their rather small but beautifully done exhibition, 8mm films were totally in the past and we could just see them displayed as antiques. Yet Fujifilm Square in Roppongi is great place to visit if you have time in Tokyo, and don’t miss their fabulous museum shop!

According to Fujifilm’s press release dated 2nd June, 2009, Fujifilm is going to stop the sale of FUJICHROME R25N in March 2012 and FUJICHROME RT200N in May 2010. And Fujifilm’s processing service is going to end in September 2013.

All the photos from HMD Japan 2009 can be seen on Flickr.

Networking

Suddenly from last year, a lot of regional film archiving projects are emerging in Japan. And Film Festivals in Japan are showing more and more interest in regional films. When they have symposiums, seminars or workshops, at least one or two FPS members go to see what’s going on, but it seems they are mainly focusing on the contents, digitization and how to make good re-use of old footage. We had never come across film preservation ethics or long term preservation efforts. I was invited to Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival in October this year to introduce FPS’ activities. They also had home movie related screenings during the festival. I’m hoping that they will have HMD next time in 2011.

FPS is also getting involved in a new regional film archive project from next Spring in Bunkyo-ward, Tokyo (where FPS’ office is). So, we’ll keep making efforts to place emphasis on the preservation side of this sort of project. For the temperature controlled vault, our institutional member Kyoshin Warehouse Co., Ltd. is renovating their vault – used to be a storage for food – into a special vault for Audiovisual materials (five degrees). And we are ready to make a contract with them when it’s complete.

Reps and Volunteers

I especially wish to thank Asako Takemori (HMD Misawa & Hirosaki), Satoe Tamura (HMD Nagoya), Yuko Shiota (HMD Senju), Keiichi Shima (HMD Yanesen) and Nozomi Nakagawa (HMD Kodaira) for their cooperation and considerable input. It feels so great to witness their progress year by year. Nozomi is our accountant, and also taking charge of film inspection and film projection workshop for newcomers as a leader of FPS’ Small Gauge Dept. SGD is opening a new inspection room near the FPS office in 2010.

We had a reps meeting before HMD on 16th August 2009 (13 reps and potential reps attended), and will have another meeting after HMD on 28th November 2009 in ELMO headquarters in Nagoya, and best home movies screenings follow on the same day at Cultural Path Shumokukan – they have an English website here.

Volunteers:

(in Misawa) Saiko Horiuchi, Hisashi Ando, Takeo Mochizuki, Kana Yamamoto, Sachiko Yamashita, Sakiko Kimura, Ai Moriyama, Misato Chikayama, Eri Yamaki, Toshiko Shimokawa, Akiko Miura, Yuko Tamo, Yoko Matsuhashi

(in Hirosaki) Satoshi Shibata, Keiko Saito, Masafumi Takebayashi

(in Senju) Yasuhide Takanashi, Hidetoshi Sase, Idle Man

(in HMD Yanesen) Satoko Ohashi, Sadanobu Iida, Mariko Goda, Chie Nagai, Ryuji Nakayama, Shigeki Arimitsu, Mari Kawamoto

(in HMD Kodaira) Mikio Yamazaki, Yuko Kodama, Keiko Imai

(in HMD Nagoya) Hiroki Yamashita, Kazuo Shinato, Miyuki Takeda, Yoko Fukada, Nobuaki Hara, Ayumi Hara, Yoji Hasegawa, Saki Tanaka, Masako Kitamura

Best HMD 2009 from Japan!

MISAWA Organizer: Asako Takemori Venue: Misawa City Library Mikawame Public Adult Lecture R8, BW, Sil., 4minutes, 1965 from Misawa City Hall This is one of the 25 regular 8 films discovered in Misawa City Hall. All of them were in boxes but the descriptions on them did not match the contents of the film. The original box of this film says “Cultural Festival” but there was Mikawame Community Center shot in the film, so it is supposed to be in the box saying “Mikawame Public Adult Lecture”. Bashful local ladies at the commemorative photo-op at the end of the lecture are impressive.

HIROSAKI Organizer: Asako Takemori Venue: Menbo Takeya – soba restaurant Odate; Sketch of the Snow Country S8, Color, Sil., 8minutes, year unknown from Kazuo Yoshida This film consists of three parts; In the main street of Odate city, Akita pref, you’ll first see the “Snow Vehicle”. Then, a festival called Amekko-ichi (Candy Fair) in this same street. Every February they have this seasonal tradition with the belief that if you eat candy on the day, you’ll never catch cold. And the last part of the film is about the film owner’s wife Kimiko and icicles, which was the audience’s favourite. Mr Yoshida is scared of heights, and asked his wife to deal with the big icicles at the second floor, which is beautifully shot. She passed away last February right before the Candy Fair.

SENDAI Organizer: Hidenori Sakamotoi Venue: Sendai City Museum of History and Folklore Yellow Patrol R8, Color, Sil., 8minutes, mid-1960s from Yasutoshi Ishikawa A rapid increase in car accidents accompanied the increase in the number of cars around 1962 to 63, Nippon-unyu (shipping company) started educational activities to promote road safety. They created a theme song “Good kids’ road is good way to go home” and assembled “Yellow Patrol” to do a campaign combining traffic rules and gymnastic exercises. They visited schools from Hokkaido to Kyushu with the cooperation of local police departments. This film is a record of their visits to schools in Sendai and Morioka.

SENJU Organizer: Yuko Shiota Venue: Senju Yanagicho Ju-ku Center A Launch Party for Nissan’s “Datsun” W8, BW, Sil., 3minutes, 1958 from Moriko Oishi This film is about a launch party for Nissan’s “Datsun” in 1958 on the rooftop of Mitsukoshi department store. In those days, department stores were trendsetting places, and what was special about this car was that it used a plastic body for the first time in Japan. They own a car factory (now it’s a car shop) and shot a lot of footage in the factory such as “A Day in the Factory” or “Three-wheeler Inspection”.

KODAIRA Organizer: Nozomi Nakagawa Venue: Gas Museum 1977 Okutama, Festival of Dolls, Piano Recital S8, Color, Sil., 4minutes, 1977 from Masako Miyatake Kodaira-city is located in the heart of greater Tokyo and Bridgestone Tire Factory is in the very center of the city. This film shows a girl brought up in the area in Spring 1977. She spends New Year’s day with her family in the company’s recreation facility, and wears traditional kimono for the dolls festival in March, and is in a brand new dress for a piano recital. She shared with the audience a lot of memories from her childhood.

YANESEN Organizer: Keiichi Shima Venue: Miyanaga Kaikan Hiro-chan’s Wedding Party R8, BW, Sil., 8minutes, 1971 from Etsuo Watanabe Wedding party in 1971, Sendai at an old style Japanese restaurant. You will see a slightly nervous groom pouring Sake for the relatives, and a shy bride is bashful at the movie camera, a grandfather in formal traditional Japanese dress sings his party piece “Takasagoya” and towards the end, a drunken attendee starts the perennial “catching weatherfish” dance. Although it’s a silent film, you can gradually hear the cheerful sound as the party goes on.

NAGOYA Organizer: Satoe Tamura Venue: Cultural Path Shumokukan New Year 1969 S8, Color and BW, Sil., 15minutes, 1969 from Katsutoshi Kitazawa At the beginning, you’ll see the mochi pounding tradition at the film owner’s house. They go to the shrine later on – another typical thing to do at Japanese New Year. On the 3rd January, they visit one of their relatives in Tokyo by driving “Subaru 1100 sports”, and it turns into a roadmovie. It shows Tokyo University’s campus where the student activism over Yasuda-kodo symbolized the year 1969. and also surroundings of Minamiazabu area in Tokyo. The beautiful snowcapped Mt. Fuji and the sports car are wonderfully shot at the end on their way back from Tokyo.

*HMD Osaka, Nishifunabashi, and Sangenchaya are not taking part in best HMD screenings. We’ll make a Best HMD 2009 from Japan DVD as usual as our activity record and promotion tool.