Celebrate Home Movie Day with CAAM on October 19

A screenshot of a young Asian American child holding an old video recording device.
An image from the Mary Soo Hoo family collection.
Preserving amateur-made films helps us remember and commemorate our community's history.

Cultural heritage institutions and venues around the world will be joining together on October 19, 2019 to celebrate Home Movie Day, an annual celebration of amateur-made films and filmmaking. On this day, neighbors come together to share their stories through home movies with their community. Community members also have the opportunity to learn how to best care for their home movies in various formats from professionals working in the field of audiovisual preservation.

But why are home movies important? Preserving amateur-made films helps us remember and commemorate our community’s history. They also reveal celebratory times and intimate moments with our family and loved ones. And lastly, uncovering home movies from the past and watching them once again reminds us that these narratives will never be forgotten.

The Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) has been preserving home movies and contributing to audiovisual history preservation through Memories to Light, our project to collect and digitize home movies and to share them—and the stories they tell—to a broad public. With Memories to Light, CAAM demonstrates the importance of collective storytelling and fosters a greater understanding of highlighting the Asian American experience. 

Join the San Francisco Bay Area community at Artists’ Television Access for Home Movie Day 2019 on Saturday, October 26 from 1:00-4:00pm for a chance to have your home movies inspected and safely projected. Bring your home movies on 8mm, Super 8, 9.5mm, 16mm film and/or VHS during the inspection period from 1:00-2:00pm for an opportunity to have them projected during the screening at 1:30-3:00pm. The event will end with a special screening of home movies from the Prelinger Archives presented by Megan and Rick Prelinger. Artists’ Television Access is located at 992 Valencia St. San Francisco, CA 94110. For those not in the Bay Area, you can find a Home Movie Day taking place near you on the Center for Home Movies website.

Interested in contributing your home movies to Memories to Light? We’re looking for home movies on 8mm, Super 8 and 16mm! Learn more about Memories to Light on our website, view our collection and recent home movie acquisitions on our Internet Archive page, and contact memoriestolight@caamedia.org for more information on how to participate.

-Patricia Villon

 

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