What hidden treasures lie in those old home movies that you have in the closet?
Guest post by Skip Elsheimer
Triangle Home Movie Day, sponsored by the Film Studies Program, NCSU, and A/V Geeks Archive is happening on Saturday October 15th, 2011, from 1pm – 4pm at the North Carolina State Archive (109 East Jones Street). It will be located in the First Floor Auditorium in the state archive building.
Discover the value of these unique cultural and historical documents and how to save them for future generations. You can spend the day watching old films and playing Home Movie Day bingo. You’ll have the chance to win prizes and a free DVD transfer of your film.
What is Home Movie Day?
Home Movie Day was started in 2002 as a worldwide celebration of amateur home movies, during which people in cities and towns all over would get to meet local film archivists, find out about the long-term benefits of film versus video and digital media, and-most importantly-get to watch those old family films! Because they will happen in communities across the globe, Home Movie Day events and screenings can focus on local and family histories, taking us back to a time when Main Street was bustling and the beehive hair-do was all the rage, with images of people we may know or resemble. Home movies are an essential record of our past, and they are among the most authoritative documents of times gone by.
How can people participate?
It’s simple: rifle through your attics, dig through your closets, call up Grandma, and search out your family’s home movies (8mm, Super8mm, or 16mm) and bring them to the nearest Home Movie Day event to see them projected. Or just show up and watch the films of others. It’s not just historically significant—it’s fun! Triangle Home Movie Day will also be featuring Home Movie Day Bingo with prizes for the whole family.
History
Home Movie Day was started by a group of film archivists concerned about what would happen to all the home movies shot on film during the 20th century. They knew many people out there have boxes full of family memories that they’ve never seen for lack of a projector, or fears that the films were too fragile to be viewed again. They also knew that many people were having their amateur films transferred to videotape or DVD, with the mistaken idea that their new digital copies would last forever and the “obsolete” films could be discarded. Original films can long outlast any film or video transfer and are an important part of our cultural history! For more information about the other Home Movie Days around the world, visit the Home Movie Day site.
Testimonial from past Home Movie Days
“We brought footage that we had never seen before taken of our wedding in the 1960s. It was exciting to see us all dressed up in our wedding gear, and that adorable flower girl who is of course all grown up now”
—Jerrie Dearborn, Raleigh“You can’t imagine what it means to a parent to look back and see how cute they were and how happy your kids were. I wouldn’t take a million dollars for these, I really wouldn’t.”
—Gerry Probert, Garner“Thanks so much for Home Movie Day. It was so great to see my family again the way it was. I called mom last night and told her I had seen the films and she was so happy. It was also the first time my husband had seen my dad ‘in action.'”
—Teresa Nunes, Raleigh“My family has had a pile of old films in a cabinet for as long as I can remember. It had been years and years since any of us had thought about them. After hearing about Home Movie Day, I remembered the films and brought a film that ended up being a short fiction movie my family made in the 1950s starring my mother as a cannibalistic stalker lurking in a tree! It was enormous fun to see, and it was also wonderful to see some shots of my older sister as a baby, toddling around. I also loved seeing other people’s films. It was like an unedited archive of what used to be important to record. It was great!”
—Anna Bigelow, Raleigh“Years of therapy don’t come close to the experience of seeing yourself, at age two, hunting Easter eggs in your plaid overalls. After the Home Movie Day experts had inspected my 40-year-old Super-8 film and carefully mounted the reel on the projector, I watched in amazement as my early childhood appeared on the screen. I had never seen this footage before; I had never even suspected that such treasures lay waiting in the old tin breadbox of home movies my mother had found in the attic. My kids had a great time, too. It blew their little minds to see daddy as a toddler, and they had so much fun playing Home Movie Day Bingo. Home Movie Day was a wonderful event for the whole family”
—Steve Wiley, Raleigh