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From make-out sessions and fish gutting to old Chicago, Home Movie Day reels us in.
You never know what you’ll see when you project a home movie that no one has watched for decades. Maybe a birthday party. Or possibly a film documenting the frolicking activities at a Canadian nudist colony. That’s exactly what you would’ve viewed last year at Chicago Film Archives’s annual Home Movie Day, an event where anyone can screen family footage and found videos or watch other people’s celluloid high jinks.
“I’ve seen so many Christmases and birthdays, but they’re all different in their own little way,” says Anne Wells, the processing archivist organizing this year’s Home Movie Day on Saturday 17 at the Chicago Cultural Center. In addition to watching or screening, people with 8mm, Super8 and 16mm home movies can bring them in for a professional inspection and minor repairs (3–6pm), and the Chicago Film Archives can make transfers later to DVD, at a cost of 20 cents per foot of film. From 6–9pm, home movies will be screened with old-timey piano accompaniment. What will unfold? We’ve got a preview.
Maxwell Street Market
During Home Movie Day, people often point out old Chicago landmarks and share their memories. For Wells, that’s one of the pleasures of the event. Footage of the old Maxwell Street Market turned up in movies that Karl and Diane Berolzheimer donated to the archives in 2005. “The reel was labeled ‘Walls & Helen,’ so it was a total surprise to find,” Wells says. “It reminds us of when the Maxwell Street Market actually took place on Maxwell Street.”
Ken Buffo’s wedding
Buffo, 50, of Itasca, had his 1983 wedding filmed on Super8. Lacking a projector, he hadn’t seen the footage for at least 15 years, until he brought it to the Chicago Film Archives, which transferred it onto DVD. “It was absolutely phenomenal, just to see all of these people and the way we were,” he says. We’re betting the ’80s hair prompted some interesting memories, too.
Jeff Martin’s finds
Since his family didn’t have a movie camera, Martin, 40, of Logan Square, remembers being jealous of his camera-toting neighbors. Now, he collects discarded home movies at garage and estate sales, and brings his latest finds each year to Home Movie Day. Martin recently found a movie from Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, near where he grew up, showing what the town looked liked before its steel-industry economy faded. But his oddest discovery is a 1961 film showing a woman making out with one man and then another, abruptly followed by a sequence of someone gutting a fish. “Every home movie is a little mysterious,” he says. “You wonder exactly what is going on.”
Get reel at Home Movie Day on Saturday 17 at the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E Washington St; free. Call 312-243-1808 to make an appointment for a film inspection.
