Libraries Celebrate Home Movie Day

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In this age of DVDs and streaming video, the phrase "home movies" takes on a quaint and nostalgic glow.

It takes us back to gatherings at our grandparents' homes, when the family would gather around an 8mm or 16mm projector.

But home movies have gained something of a cult audience.

Oct. 15 is Home Movie Day, which will be celebrated by a number of libraries and other institutions throughout the country.

Several of them, such as the Laramie County Public Library in Cheyenne, Wyo., are encouraging patrons to drop off their home movies so they can be preserved and, in some cases, restored.

Laramie County is collaborating on its inaugural celebration of the event with the Cheyenne Genealogical and Historical Society and Bevara Digital, a new film/video/image-to-digital transfer service in Cheyenne.

According to a news release, Cheyenne’s event involves local residents bringing long forgotten films or videotapes to the library on Friday, Oct. 14, where they will be inspected and cleaned by media preservation professionals. On Saturday, Oct. 15, area residents and home movie contributors are invited to come to the Library anytime from 10 a.m. - 3 p.m. to screen and enjoy a day of historic footage and home-made entertainment.

“Home Movie Day is a great way to celebrate family and local history captured on film and videotape in a film festival-like setting.” said Bill Lindstrom, president of Bevara Digital. “With older film and tape-based media rapidly deteriorating, HMD is an opportunity to recognize amateur filmmaking of the past and talk about ways to preserve those valuable images for the future.”

The library will accept content on 8mm, super 8mm, and 16mm films, as well as a limited number of VHS and 8mm videotape. Film projectors and videotape players will be on site to handle projection of these specific film and video formats.

According to the website of the University Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, written when it was celebrating its first home movie day, “Home Movie Day was started in 2002 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 have boxes full of family memories that they've never seen for lack of a projector, or out of fear that the films were too fragile to be viewed. 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.

However, the website emphasizes that original films, as well as the equipment required to view them - can long outlast any version on VHS tape, DVDs, or other digital media. “Not only that, but contrary to the stereotype of the faded, scratched, and shaky home movie image, the original films are often carefully shot in beautiful, vibrant color—which may not come across in a low-quality video transfer.”

Among the libraries that have celebrated Home Movie Day is the Urbana (Ill.) Free Library, in partnership with the University Library. The activities included a "film clinic" for assessing the condition of older films, information about how to care for family films and videos and screenings of home movies.

Archivists were on hand to demonstrate historic films preserved in their collection and emphasize that transferring films to video or digital media doesn’t ensure their durability, while children created their own hand-drawn animations on clear 16mm film for viewing at the event.

Anke Voss of the Champaign County Historical Archives, which is part of the Urbana Free Library, said the library will not be celebrating Home Movie Day this year, although it probably will in the future.

However, Voss said the archive is still heavily involved in the restoration of home movies and is working on one project that will attempt to restore a recently discovered cache of films by one company that produced movies of life in the Urbana-Champaign area in the 1940s and 1950s.

The films, she said, were rescued from a basement, where, unfortunately, several of the films were found to be covered in water. Only the top layer was recoverable.

She said the archive at Urbana Free Library stores its films in a climate controlled environment, adding that "most archives can't provide cold storage."

The films have yet to be screened, and transferring them promises to be extremely expensive, she said.

She said preservation involves much more than just preserving the material itself. One must also have playback equipment as well.

Another challenge is that businesses like laboratories that are capable of performing transfers from home movie formats are becoming increasingly rare.

Voss added that many families just don't have the money to spend on preserving their old home movies. As a result, she said, "I think that a lot of people will probably just abandon some of that material. So it's very sad."

Today's problems with preserving home movies on 8mm and 16mm only foreshadow what we will ultimately face with the problems of preserving the digital images that exist today on hard drives and flash drives, Voss said.

There is a lot of material - the modern version of home movies - now being created on video through smart phones and computers with built-in cameras, she said. 

"People are making movies all the time. What is going to happen to that content? That’s the challenge that we’re up against next," she said.

Home movies on actual film are still being made.

Pianist and Evanston (Ill.) resident David Drazin collects home movies and even still takes them. Some of them are on his YouTube site.

Drazin said he began shooting home movies when he was 11. He tried making cartoons, mostly of relatives and family, including a "little version of Mission Impossible."

When he was 13, Drazin created a film tribute to actress Lillian Gish by intercutting his own home movies (screenshot pictured) with footage of vintage silent films.  In those days, companies like Blackhawk Films of Davenport, Iowa, offered vintage silent films on 8mm and 16mm for the home movie market.

Drazin said he just "couldn’t get enough of film" when he was in his teens.

In his adulthood, Drazin continued his hobby, visiting house and garage sales to search for vintage film. One of his favorites, he said, is a movie taken by a sergeant in World War II after the war was over, containing images of French cities and the troop ship coming home. One sees a half sunken ship in a harbor.

Drazin confesses that "Fear is something that I feel when I’m watching home movies for the first time. You never know what someone may have filmed." In one instance, he acquired a series of films by a family that documents several milestones, such as children growing up and Christmas parties. They culminate, however, in a home-made pornographic film.

Drazin has several tips for storing home movies, such as keeping them in a cool dry place. He tries to keep most of his home movies on the ground floor,  because his house is built on a slab, so the floor is cold.

He also noted that,"Films love cold.  50 degrees with low humidity is supposed to be ideal for long term storage of film.  If storage conditions are good, films can last a long time."

To restore a film, Drazin goes through a reel to repair splices, using bits of tape on broken sprockets to preserve a frame.  He also uses a film cleaner on a cloth roll that he then applies to the film, holding the film and cranking it through his fingers, to remove dust and dirt.

Drazin still shoots film; Kodak still makes a Super 8mm film for the consumer market and there are still laboratories around that will process the film.

Learn more about Home Movie Day and find an event near you.

For more information on the preservation of your home movies visit the Preserve Audiovisual/Film page in the "Preserve Your Family Treasures" section of our website.

Photo credit: Studio Tempura