Home Movie Day: Oct. 20, 2012

Photo courtesy of Skip Elsheimer.

A Home Movie Day will take place in Raleigh, N.C., on Saturday, October 20, 2012 from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. People are invited to come watch home movies or bring their own 8mm, Super 8mm, or 16mm film to share. The event will be held at the N.C. State Archives Auditorium (109 East Jones Street), and is free and open to the public.

Home Movie Day is an annual, nationwide celebration of amateur films and filmmaking that began in 2002. These events provide the opportunity to see and share home movies, and learn how to care for them. How do you see what's on these films? How you get them digitized? How do you preserve them for future generations?

A lot of people have been asking me about digitizing old films. While working on Abandoned Allies I turned to the expert, Skip Elsheimer of A/V Geeks (@AVGeeks), for help with digitizing Super 8 footage shot in the late 1960s. I chronicled much of that journey on this blog (http://bit.ly/nuTanF), so some of you are very familiar with those struggles. My interest in digitizing footage has grown considerably as a result, and I'm fascinated by what Skip's doing these days.

For a filmmaker like me, preserving our cinematic past is really important. I'm so excited about this Home Movie Day, and plan on bringing some of my family's home movies to find out what's on them. This event is perfect for Vietnam veterans with footage and no way to see what's on it.

To learn more about the Triangle Home Movie Day, visit http://www.avgeeks.com/hmd.html. There's a Facebook event page as well. You can also visit the Home Movie Day website for information on a national level.

Photo courtesy of Skip Elsheimer.

Photo courtesy of Skip Elsheimer.

The Triangle Home Movie Day is co-sponsored by the Film Studies Program at NCSU, the NC State Archives, Duke Archive of Documentary Arts, and AV Geeks Transfer Services.