Home Movie Day is back at Indiana University, and it’s going to be great. On Saturday, October 20th, starting at 3pm, the IU Cinema will screen home movies that members of the public bring in. The event, which supports films in 8mm, Super8, 16mm, VHS or DVD formats, will include discussion with home movie owners, the viewing public, and trained specialists (for those who plan to bring in home movies, the doors open at 2pm to talk with the film specialists about your prints).
From the DVD Living Room Cinema: Films from Home Movie Day, Vol. 1.
Home Movie Day began in 2003 as the brainchild of archivists at the Center for Home Movies to promote the showing and preservation of home movies; today, Home Movie Day is celebrated at over 100 venues in 17 countries across 5 continents. If you’re not one of the lucky ones in Indiana this weekend, here’s a list of other venues for Home Movie Day. And below, a trailer for this year’s event.
We’ve written before about Home Movie Day and home movies made by and featuring African-Americans, such as the films made by Ernest Beane and the Solomon Sir Jones Collection (some of which will be shown at IU’s event this year, courtesy of Yale University).
Of particular interest this year will be a contribution from our guest, Kelli Shay Hix, Curator of Moving Images at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tennessee. Kelli will be presenting the big-screen premiere of CMHFM’s recent preservation of home movies from WLAC Nashville radio staff in the studio in 1949. The film captures this prominent Nashville station at a moment when their programming began its shift from country-style fare towards a focus on emerging black rhythm and blues artists in the 1950s. Kelli writes of their early broadcasts in this format:
The shows were soon a hit, not only with African-American listeners, and not only with adult audiences, but with teenagers and adults from many backgrounds…Through the medium of radio, it was nearly impossible to guess the race of the DJs (none were African-American), which may have aided in the shows’ crossing of racial lines and generational lines, and which brought a new and controversial music to communities it had never gone before…These late night broadcasts are credited with jump-starting the careers of Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, James Brow, and Little Richard, and for helping to sow the seeds of the fusion that would become rock and roll.
Until Saturday, we’ll leave you with another trailer–this one for Día del cine casero from La Cineteca Nacional de México:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMEYw9r9gYw&w=420&h=315]
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