Fans of home movies and moving image archives may want to check out the guidelines for this short film competition, sponsored by the Association of Moving Image Archivists: PRESERVING THE WORLD’S MOVING IMAGE HERITAGE — AMIA Short Film Competition. As the competition website explains, the challenge is to create a film or video that conveys the importance
of preserving the world’s moving image heritage.

The entry deadline is August 15th, so start shooting!

I came to filmmaking late in my academic career, so it was without any formal photography training and during my first year of film school that I set out to learn best archival practices, digitization techniques, and the ins and outs of small format filmmaking.While there’s no substitute for learning hands-on through trial, error and frustration as I did, the following is a collection of websites and online resources that most helped me as I stumbled through the first phase of preservation:

Working with Home Movies

General Interest & Footage Sources

Home & Amateur – A blog about home movies and amateur film, whose contributors hail from the Center for Home Movies.

Lost in Light – The documentation of a (now complete) free home movie transfer project, including home movies, categorized by topic, many of them available for Creative Commons remixing.

Prelinger Archives/Archive.Org - A collection of home movies includes amateur films and videotapes from the collections of the Center for Home Movies, the Prelinger archives, other home movie aficionados. Many of the movies are public domain or available for use under Creative Commons guidelines.

Supplies & Small Format Filmmaking Resources

Film Shooting – A great online source for news about all things home movies and small format filmmaking based in Norway. Given that two major print publications (Super8Today and SmallFormat) have shut down their presses in the last year, this online news pool is essential.

On Super 8 – This site bills itself as “impartial and comprehensive resources for today’s Super 8 and 8mm small gauge film makers.” It’s all that and more; based in the UK.

Pro8mm- The only movie house I know of in the US that specifically specializes in Super-8 film stocks and transfers. In 2008, they added a Milliennium II Scanner with daVinci 2K color corrector to their transfer menu, capable of SD or HD scans. It’s the premier scanning system for small  gauge film.

Super 8 Site – A German Super8 site. The “links and addresses” page is worth a look.

Urbanski Film – Though the website screams 1990s, I’ve ordered and been very pleased with film cleaning supplies, projector bulbs, and other hard-to-find small format equipment.

And though it goes without saying, eBay is an immense (if risky) resource for finding old Super 8 cameras and projectors, as well as professional VHS decks for digitizing old videocasettes.  Before purchasing the unknown, I’ve found the folks on the AMIA Small Gauge/Amateur Film Interest Group listserve to be incredibly helpful and willing to share their expertise.

Preservation & Care Information

Brodsky & Treadway -The transfer house for rare, valuable, and fragile home movies. Their companion site, Little Film, contains detailed, downloadable tips and instructions for caring for home movies.

Home Movie Day – A major project of the Center for Home Movies, Home Movie Day is an international celebration of home movies. The site contains lots of information about film handling and care as well as links to home movie day events across the country and the globe. Home Movie Day also keeps a running list of home movie transfer houses.

National Film Preservation Foundation – A clearinghouse of film care basics and resources for more advanced users. Be sure to download their extensive film preservation guide.

If there are other resources you’d like to know about, leave a comment below and I’ll share what info I might have!

As part of the panel, I’ll share clips of For Memories’ Sake and also tips and tricks for finding and using archival home movie footage in independent films.

Panel Description: Super 8 is the OG of guerilla filmmaking. Find out how you can make this beautiful, classic film gauge work in an HD world. From finding a camera to choosing film stock, scanning and encoding options, inclusive workflows, tips that make the difference and more. These aren’t your grandpa’s home movies…

Panelists:

Philip Vigeant – Pro8mm
Adam Garner – Trigger Studios
Branden Lower – A Bryan Photo
Ashley Maynor – Preservation Project Films

Add it to your SXSW schedule here!

Home Movie Day is important because our lives, our recollections, and our truth is recorded in home movies. One day, what the heck, c’mon! -Steve Martin

Sadly, I won’t be hosting a Southwest Virginia Home Movie Day this year.  Instead, I’m focusing on distribution efforts for my upcoming film about my grandmother’s home movie collection, For Memories’ Sake.

There are many ways, however, to participate in this year’s International HMD activities, both in person and on the web. Check out the many other locations for Home Movie Day 2009, this year’s revised and updated film transfer guide, and Home Movie Day’s Facebook page.

Small format and Super-8 enthusiasts may also be interested in a post I wrote recently for Self-Reliant Film on Super-8 Resources.

Please join me, filmmaker John Petitt, and photographer JJ. Tizou for a special screening of four films along the theme of “Photographic Memory,” curated by Scribe Video Center’s Producer’s Forum at the Ibrahim Theater in Philadelphia.

I’ll also be offering a “master class” workshop the day before on caring for family archives. More information about that can be found here. 

Descriptions of the films and event information is below:

The Ibrahim Theater at International House

3701 Chestnut Street

Philadelphia, PA, 19104

See map: Google Maps

Sunday, September 20, 2009 – 7:00pm

Tickets: $10 general, $8 students/seniors, $5 Scribe members

How does the act of taking a photograph define a moment in time?

Four documentaries, including a preview of Ashley Maynor’s For Memories’ Sake, explore how the photographs triggers and influences our memories and how image making can be a transformative act in itself.

For Memories’ Sake (US, 2009, work-in-progress, 30 min)
Directed by Ashley Maynor
Angela Singer is a Southern homemaker who has taken an average of a dozen photos a day for the last 35 years, compiling a mysterious and strange archive of over 150,000 photographs of her daily life. Her life and photography hobby is revealed through the lens of her granddaughter, filmmaker Ashley Maynor. Investigating one Southern homemaker’s obsession with the photographic image, the film asks questions about the nature of photography as a form of memory and captures a cross-generational portrait of two Southern women whose lives as image-makers have taken very different paths.

Ulysse (France 1982, 35mm, color, 22 min. French w/ Eng sub)
Directed by Agnes Varda
Agnes Varda, considered the grand mother of the French New Wave, returns to a striking photograph she took in 1954, its subject a naked man on the beach beside a young boy, also naked, and the corpse of a goat. When the subjects, tracked down thirty years later, fail to remember the circumstances surrounding the photo, the film becomes a haunting meditation on the elusive nature of memory as well as a fascinating introduction to Varda’s photography and its influence on her filmmaking.

Looking Back (US, 2008, 6 min)
Directed by Emile Bokaer
presented by Media That Matters
Albert Lewis struggles with addiction and with memories of war. His photography helps him survive in a supportive community of homeless veterans where he eloquently uses his picture taking as a way to look back, but to also gauge his and his fellow veterans’ progress.

The Archivist (US, 2007, 4:46 min)
Directed by John Petitt
Originally made as part of the First Person Festival’s, ‘Object of My Affection’ documentary film competition, The Archivist profiles Philadelphia based photographer J.J. Tiziou and his vast digital photo archive. Tiziou reflects on his relationship with the archive and challenges of organizing and maintaining it.

For Memories’ Sake – Official Trailer from Ashley Maynor on Vimeo.

The trailer for my upcoming documentary, For Memories’ Sake, is now online! Spread the word and become a fan on Facebook.

You can catch a sneak preview of my latest documentary, For Memories’ Sake this Saturday, August 8th, at 1:30 pm at the Nims Theater at the University of New Orleans. The screening is part of a faculty juried showcase at the 2009 University Film and Video Association conference. Please come if you’re attending!

If you can’t make the screening, you can still find out more about the movie by following my posts that have just begun on the blog at Self-Reliant Film, where I recount the making of the movie. More will follow in the coming weeks!

This blog was begun in 2006 in part to detail the process of preserving my grandmother’s home movies. That preservation project grew into two local Home Movie Day events, a brief stint as a library archivist, and, most recently, a half-hour documentary (now in post-production) about my extraordinary grandmother, a Southern homemaker who has taken at least a dozen photos a day for the last thirty plus years, amassing an archive of over 150,000 photographs.

In the coming weeks, I’ll revisit the long and sometimes tedious process of caring for my grandmother’s photo and home movie collections, and I’ll reflect upon the process of making this film about her, a project that slowly came into being over the last three years.

(The wonderful poster art for For Memories’ Sake is the work of Adam Ewing at Yee-Haw Industries.)

Ever since discovering my grandmother’s home movies in 2004, these small films have been a hobby–maybe even a borderline obsession–that have inspired me to do such bold things as quit a PhD program to go to film school, to start this blog, and stay up until the wee hours trying to snipe old projectors on eBay. Though I was born (alas) in a home video generation, I have devoted much time, energy, and income to preserving my family’s collection of amateur films and hope to inspire many others to do the same.

If you missed the Roanoke Valley’s first Home Movie Day I hosted this November 1st, here’s a recap of some highlights of the day:

One Home Movie Day attendee brought in a film for her co-worker who couldn’t attend the actual event. Earlier that morning, the attendee explained, just the memory of the movie brought the film’s owner to tears. It was, the film’s owner said, a film of a time “when I was young and so full of hope.”

Audience members cracked jokes during the screening’s duller moments, including what felt like an eternity (really only about 2 minutes) of footage devoted to a squirrel sitting in a tree. Several of us were convinced something crazy would happen to justify the long take. No such luck.

With cool prizes including Home Movie Day 2008 buttons, the awesome new HMD tote bag, and free film transfers from Home Movie Depot and Pro 8mm, the HMD Bingo competition was fierce. We had competitors ranging in age from around 7 to 57 years old. At one point, a little girl, the youngest participant, came and sat next to me with her Bingo card in hand while I ran the projectors. She whispered in my ear, “How about you and me work as a team?” Too cute!

After the screening was over, a participant who brought in her 1960s slumber party movie confessed, “My films were so much brighter and colorful than I remembered! I don’t remember them being so beautiful!” She was also the lucky winner of a gift certificate for a free film transfer at Pro8mm, so she’ll be able to see her films again at home.

My favorite comment from the event was caught on video, during some clips of some pretty funny dancing during the above mentioned 1960s slumber party. A ten-year old audience member asked, “You mean people actually recorded these home movies?”

You can check out a clip of the slumber party film (and listen to the background comments!) for yourself…

…
Film drop-off and inspection: 10am to noon
Public screening of home movies, refreshments, and games: 1pm to 3pm
Location: Roanoke Public Library in downtown Roanoke, VA

# of people bringing films for repair/inspection: 4
Number of films screened: 16
Formats screened: 8mm and Super8
Audience: 18+ 3 volunteers

Laughs: too many to count!

Our event was publicized in both print and on the web, including an event listing in The Roanoker magazine, print and web listings in the 40 Days and 40 Nights of Arts and Culture Festival website, and through posters and postcards we distributed in downtown Roanoke and at all seven of the Roanoke Public library branches. We also had a Home Movie Day subpage and Facebook Event Invitation.

I’d like to extend my many thanks to our generous sponsors for supplies, prizes, and support: Roanoke Public Libraries, Home Movie Depot, Pro8mm, and the Center for Home Movies. I also owe a big kudos to Alicia and Nia for volunteering their time to help me with the film repair and inspection–I couldn’t have done it without you!

If you’d like to join us next year, hop on over to our Facebook Fan Page. I’ll keep you posted on upcoming amateur film events!