The Silver Screen Oasis

Saturday, August 11, 2007 has been designated as International Home Move Day. Endorsed by such luminaries as Martin Scorsese and John Waters. Events around the world are planned. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will screen Alfred Hitchcock's and Steve McQueen's home movies. In San Francisco there will be a 12-hour event at the San Francisco Media Archive, showing home movies.

90% of amateur movies shot before 1930 have vanished. Efforts to save these treasures of personal and social history are being raised. Home movies are among the only films made without financial incentive, so we get a different perspective than Hollywood fare. There's a fellow in San Francisco who'd joined a Cinema Club in the 1950's. They shot home movies in CinemaScope! He shot downtown and Nob Hill in 1961; street scenes showing men in hats and women wearing gloves -- no one wearing shorts or sandals.

How many of you still have home movies?

Personally, I wasn't fond of home movies, especially if I appeared in them, because I never liked to watch myself on screen (especially when I was a teenager) .

But then, thank heavens, my father has been concerned about preserving his old home movies from the late 1970s and early 1980s (8mm I believe) and had them transferred to VHS and now to DVD-R. He also had my grandfather's home movies (which were filmed between 1939-1963) to Disk. I'm glad he did, because the machines which played them did not work anymore.

My father transferred his home movies to videotape in the 1980's. The transfer was very poor. They looked dark and muddy. And then they disposed of the actual films. I'm sick about it.

Moraldo,

I am coordinating Home Movie Day in Las Vegas this Saturday. Will let you know if I see any cool "Oceans Eleven", Heldorado or the Las Vegas Story outtakes!

Lynn:

I saw the History channel had a two hour documentary on Las Vegas. I only got to see a little of it. You weren't in the part I saw. (That means I can't imagine them doing anything without including you.)

Today we get the heat (and humidity.) It's supposed to feel about 105 in MD.