Dig into your closets, attics and garages and rescue your old home movies. They deserve better than that. They need to be preserved, archived and seen!
Home Movie Day is an annual event in service of celebrating and educating people about the cultural and historical value of their old home movies, especially ones on film. With a little bit of care and proper storage analog film home movies can last generations, possibly outlasting the digital photos, VHS videotapes and web movies that have come to supplant this medium.
The day is celebrated with viewing and educational events in cities around the world. Here in Chicago the Chicago Film Archives are hosting three hours of home movie inspection–where you can get your old films assessed for damage and preservability–followed by a viewing program with live musical accompaniment at 6 PM.
My pal Jimi Jones organizes the Home Movie Day in my old home base of Champaign-Urbana, IL. This year it will be held at the Urbana Free Library. Beginning at 10 AM they’re having a film clinic, where you can get your film looked at and learn how to preserve it, with screenings beginning at 11 AM.
Jimi has made two appearances on the radioshow to talk about Home Movie Day and the important value of preserving these cultural records.
I can’t stress how critical I believe it is to invest just a little time and effort into preserving the media we create, both to honor the act of creation, and for the sake of history and record. As an educational media technologist I have worked with too many faculty, students and researchers who have lost forever important media works that could have easily been preserved with a little bit of planning and time. Don’t let you memories fade away.
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