From Guy Edmonds:
City: Amsterdam
Event Venue: Filmmuseum, Vondelpark 3, 1071AA Amsterdam
Event time (screening): 13:00-18:00
Event time (inspection): 12:00-18:00
Total Audience: 325
Number of people bringing films: 45+
Films screened by Gauge: 8mm: 18, Super 8: 21, 16mm: 4, 9.5mm: 2
Volunteers (54):
Voornaam Achternaam Functie Herkomst
Rommy Albers ontvangst + archief informatie Filmmuseum
Elif Rongen archief informatie Filmmuseum
Bernhard Andre coordinatie SuperSens
Simona Monizza coordinatie Filmmuseum
Catrien Boettger coordinatie Filmmuseum
Jean-Pierre Sens coordinatie SuperSens
Guy Edmonds coordinatie Filmmuseum
Guido Bruin Flashscan SuperSens
Rixt Jonkman floor manager Filmmuseum
Anne van Es floor manager Filmmuseum
Anne Gant floor manager Filmmuseum
Ineke Wiegers info Filmmuseum Filmmuseum
Uli Ruedel info Haghe Foundation + logistiek Haghefilm Foundation
Bertil Pouw info SuperSens SuperSens
Maria Fuentes Carrasco inspectie Filmmuseum P&P
Jata Haan inspectie SuperSens
Annike Kross inspectie Filmmuseum
Andreas Busche inspectie Filmmuseum
Massimo Benvegnù inspectie Haghefilm Foundation
Nino Dzandzava inspectie Haghefilm Foundation
Laurel Howard inspectie P&P
Daniela Currò inspectie Haghefilm Foundation
Janneke van Dalen inspectie P&P
Danuta Zoledriewska inspectie P&P
Francesca Morselli inspectie P&P
Simone Venturini inspectie Haghefilm Foundation
Lyudmila Genkova inspectie P&P
Suzanne Bos inspectie P&P
Sean Kelly inspectie P&P
Ronald Reinds inspectie BenG
Suzan Crommelin inspectie/archief informatie Filmmuseum
Asen Ognyanov Ivanov inspectie/fotograaf P&P
Amy Wensing inspectie/verkoop filmspullen BenG
Patricia Gaetano logistiek tussen Bovenhal en Franse zaal BenG
Taz Morgan logistiek tussen Franse zaal en FilmTent P&P
Peter Dekker logistiek tussen Franse zaal en Onno SuperSens
Dorette Schootemeijer ontvangst + contract prijswinnaars Filmmuseum
Marike Huizinga ontvangst + coordinatie Filmmuseum
Ole Schepp operateur 9.5mm Club 9.5mm Nederland
Onno Petersen operateur grote doek SuperSens
Danny Contant operateur grote doek SuperSens
Nico de Klerk presentator Filmmuseum
Frédérique Urlings presentator Filmmuseum
Walter Swagemakers prijsuitreiking Filmmuseum
Raymond Liefjes projectie 16mm Cineco
Jan Scholten projectie super8 en normaal 8 Filmmuseum
Paulo Fonseca projectie super8 en normaal 8 Cineco
Erwin Verbruggen registratie BenG
Valentine Kuypers registratie + floor manager Franse zaal BenG
Maike Lasseur registratie/inspectie Filmmuseum
Heleen van der Molen registratie/projectie FilmTent Filmmuseum
Eva Hielscher registratie/verkoop filmspullen BenG
Ruud Molleman reparatie projectoren SuperSens
IntroductionOur aim with this year’s event was to put everything we had learnt during last year’s almost overwhelmingly successful event at the service of making it just as successful but not so overwhelming. Our evaluation focussed on key areas where we had a shortage of personnel or a lack of strategic planning. A lot of thought went into managing the initial rush of people through the door although this preparation was in fact not so necessary as there were only a dozen or so people waiting outside at twelve o’clock – perhaps our public too had learned from last year! However the flow never really stopped and by the end of the day we had reached a more evenly spread out tally of 325 visitors. This year we had a bit more space to play with, the event occupying both theatres in the Vondelpark pavilion which is the home of the Filmmuseum (at least until 2012 when we move into a four screen spaceship-type facility- but that’s another story). Everyone seemed to enjoy the occasion. Thomas Elsaesser, visiting his first Home Movie Day, praised the ‘fantastic atmosphere’.
Volunteers:
We were helped enormously by a ready supply of volunteer labour coming not just from the Filmmuseum and Supersens but also, The Institute for Sound and Vision in Hilversum(the other national moving image archive in Holland), the newly established Haghefilm Foundation, Haghefilm and Cineco itself, and students of the University of Amsterdam masters programme in the Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image. Our volunteer army was thus almost doubled to 54 people, which crucially meant that we could introduce shift work to enable our volunteers to take some time out and enjoy the different spectacles on offer. The volunteers were marshalled in their numerous different duties by Simona whose penchant for organisation succeeded in doing for HMD what Henry Ford did for automobile manufacture (but without the corresponding alienation of labour). Film inspection volunteer, Lyudmila Genkova said, “We had a fantastic time. Meeting such a diverse group of people with their unique stories and stash of memories in a purse, or a suitcase or a shopping bag. Amazing!”
The improvements in the HMD machine meant that everyone had a much more relaxed day than last year, even with the significant increase in footfall. It was very good humoured and our volunteers had time to engage with the visitors in a meaningful way, becoming, for example, their personal archivist for half an hour or so.
Massimo Benvegnù, a volunteer from the Haghefilm Foundation, specialised in 16mm film inspection and wound films through viewers that seemed too delicate to risk to the projector, “I was touched by the response of the participants. Some of the people whose films I attended to came from as far as Rotterdam and Den Haag. A lady from Scheveningen was first in line with her 16mm cans, with family films but also some images of historical importance (Zeppelins and planes flying over Den Haag in the Thirties…).
A man from Den Haag, thanks to a huge home movie reel, shared some stories of the Jewish side of his family, who all died during WWII – he was able to see his great-grandmother, of whom he told me he only had one photo (and who disappeared during the war, taken by the Germans), and the birth of his father, who was going to turn 77 the week after Home Movie Day! He decided to digitize the film and hand it to him as a birthday present.
A woman with several Super8s also had a small piece of 16mm – bizarrely there were first some images of sailing in the North Sea, and then in the tail, a minute or so of imagery from 1930s Indonesia, on a tinted pink film stock! God knows how it got there… A couple from Rotterdam, whose grandfather was a professional photographer, had some amazing amateur travelogues from the 30s, complete with intertitles, which looked very professional (a trip to Paris, a trip from Den Helder to Texel island to attend a rowing event). And my last 16mm ‘client’ of the day, at 4.30pm, was another lady from Scheveningen… her sister, who was first in line on the 16mm desk in the morning, called her after she left the Filmmuseum and told her to come to Amsterdam, as there were ‘nice people that help you with your films’.Overall, an exhilarating experience.”
Home movie screenings Filmzaal 2 (Parisien):
At 12.30 Simona Monizza and Bernhard André, from the Filmmuseum and Supersens welcomed the audience, thanked sponsors and explained the nature of proceedings. Our two comperes, Frédérique Urlings and Nico de Klerk, were introduced and the screening opened with the 16mm film which Raymond Liefjes and I had shot at last year’s event and which I had finished editing only a couple of days before and for which we had received generous sponsorship of camera film from Fujifilm and labwork by Cineco. I gave a live commentary to the images and Fré and Nico encouraged the subsequent participants to do the same with their films. This worked with most of them apart from one woman who simply insisted that the images spoke for themselves.
One of our winners from last year, Alex Haverschmidt, entered another of his father’s films, this time depicting a day on the beach at Zandvoort in 1960. Many films showed the seafaring and seacontrolling spirit of the Dutch such as one shot in 1957 at the festivities of the completion of the dyke that joins the Island of Marken to the mainland. A film report of a children’s camping trip in Ede in 1950 organised by a church social club from Haarlem came complete with titles and was potentially interesting for the Noord Hollandsarchief. Only one film qualified as an amateur narrative production. Called The Dream, it told the timeless story of a boy and a girl and how beautiful it could have been if only the girl hadn’t dreamt it all. A touch of glamour was supplied by the actress Eva van Heijningen who entered her experimental film shot during the Venice Film Festival of 1973.
Many people stayed until the prize ceremony at ten to six and the theatre was full to hear that not one but three prizes were to be awarded. The jury of Fré, Nico and projectionist, Onno Petersen, gave third prize to Zwaluwen about the salvation and feeding of some swallows which had fallen out of their nest. Second prize went to Bootreis van Indonesië about a 1957 return journey from the newly independent (of Dutch rule) Indonesia aboard the ‘Willem Ruys’. And first prize went to De Bijlmer, comparatively recently shot in the southeast Amsterdam suburb by a Brazilian immigrant. It depicts the demolition of the 1960s tower blocks in the 1990s and also features some beautiful time lapse effects. All three films will be preserved by the Filmmuseum and screened at next year’s event. The first prize winner also gets to keep the Supersens Golden Camera trophy for a year and all prizewinners get digitisations of their films on DVDs.
Film Tent
As last year we had extra projection spaces for those who didn’t want to be part of the large gathering in the Parisien or who had simply arrived too late to get one of the 25 screening slots. This took the form of a marquee erected on the terrace and contained dual gauge 8mm projectors and a 16mm projector all under the operation of Jan Scholtens, Paolo Fonseca and Raymond Liefjes. Not all films shown in this alternative space were registered but twenty of them were. Hence the total figure of people bringing films is recorded as 45+.\
Curated programmes featuring restored films and presentations about film preservation This year we decided to expand the day into a more ambitious showcase of Home movies outside the home, featuring the largely professional work that occurs around the subject of amateur film. We collected together a series of presentations that took place in our other theatre which aimed to give an overview of different approaches to the use, reuse and interpretation of home movies and amateur film and had the additional advantage of providing extra space for the large number of visitors.
13.00 - 13.45 Filmmuseum programma, Featuring amateur films preserved in the last year and including the two winners from the previous HMD, Vakantie Biesbosch and Hilversum en Zeeland. I presented this with Dorette Schootemeijer and gave an indication of the preservation techniques employed, which in the case of Hilversum en Zeeland involved a digital intermediate blow up to 35mm.
14.00 - 15.30 SuperSens, Huis van Alijn, UvA en Regionale Archieven Jean-Pierre Sens gave an illustrated talk about his experiences repairing and digitising small gauge film including striking images of films in various states of peril- “almost dead but rescued at the last minute.”
Sylvie Dhaene and Greet van der Haegen represented the wonderful Huis van Alijn. They have a permanent exhibition of amateur filmmaking incorporated into this museum of everyday life in Ghent, Belgium. They showed Zoete Zeventig or Sweet Seventies, a compilation film by Kadir Balci made out of digitised films from their collection of Belgian residents’ home movies. Gemma van den Berg of the Gemeentearchief Rotterdam and Klaartje Pompe from the Noord-Hollands Archief showed small gauge films from their collections of material relating to their regions.
Two films made by University of Amsterdam students using source material from the Smalfilmmuseum collection concluded this programme section. These were Palindrome by Lotte Baltussen and Maria Fuentes Carrasco and My Skin Will Tell You by Valentina Catena.
15.45 – 16.45 Center for Home Movies. Our very special guest, CHM’s own Albert Steg, all the way from Boston, MA via Venice, Italy, gave a very well-received presentation, outlining the worldwide context of HMD. He showed some favourite home movies from DVD, including Fairy Princess (1955), the famous home movies of Alfred Hitchcock (1934), Atom Bomb (1953) and some films of Helen Hill (2005).
17.00 – 17.50 Club 9.5mm Nederland. Members of the the club gave an illustrated talk on the history of amateur film gauges and showed films on 9.5mm using their Heurtier HSM with Xenon lamp conversion. These included “Waarom 9.5?” a humorous comparison of the advantages of the gauge over 8mm and 16mm made in the 1950s and a gorgeous 1929 film of an airship flying over Groningen – our second Zeppelin of the day!\
Displays and Attractions
Supersens gave live scanning demonstrations on their MWA machine and also had a working exhibit of a new experimental device made out of an old projector that could produce 2K scans from 9.5mm. Their extensive collection of small gauge cameras and paraphernalia which is so good for conjuring up the heyday of amateur film making enlivened the central hall and corridors. But stealing the side shows was a gentleman who turned up with his homemade 70mm projector! This was essentially a random act with only perhaps Jean-Pierre having prior knowledge of the man’s intent. Having found a spare corner, he proceeded to reassemble the partially deconstructed machine and coax it into life. After much fettling he projected for us a very pink ‘home movie’ of Lawrence of Arabia.
Press (pre-event and post-event)
Thanks to our publicity intern, Chuck Kerk, I can tell you that we had mentions in 3 local papers and 4 national ones including full articles in NRC Handelsblad, Het Parool and Volkskrant. Datum Medium Pagina Schrijver/ Bron 30-9-2009 Amstelveens Weekblad 15 23-9-2009 Echo Amsterdam Oud West 31 30-9-2009 Echo Amsterdam Zuid-Oost 35 17-10-2009 Het Financieële Dagblad 12 19-10-2009 NRC Handelsblad 18 Frits Abrahams 19-10-2009 Parool 11 Emma Boelhouwer 16-10-2009 Volkskrant 47 Christjan Knijff
25 different websites carried news of the event including one specially created by Supersens - a dedicated Dutch Home Movie Day site: www.homemovieday.eu.
Photos: A large selection of photos is available here.
Thanks to Asen and Lyudmila for so thoroughly documenting the day.