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Last year, for the first time, Christina Petersen got to see home movies of her family taken back in the 1960s.

“There’s this great story [in my family] about my great-grandmother putting the hose on the cat,” says Petersen, 26. “And there was footage of my great-grandmother picking up the cat, so we made some connections there.”

Because the movies were on two 8mm film reels, and neither she nor her family members had an 8mm projector to play them, it was a momentous event for Petersen. The screening was part of Home Movie Day, an international happening where people bring in old 8mm, Super 8 and 16mm reels to be inspected by film archivists and, if they’re in good enough condition, shown as part of a mini film fest later that night.

“These films have historical and cultural information on them—there’s documentation of neighborhoods, documentation of dress, how people behaved around each other,” says Nancy Watrous of Chicago Film Archives, which has sponsored the four-year-old event the last three years. “I saw some home movies from back in the ’40s and ’50s of somebody’s grandfather who had come over from the old country—and in every single film, he wore a suit. That was something people did in those days—they never dressed casually.”

Chicago’s Home Movie Day, which will take place on Saturday 12 at the Chicago Cultural Center, is more than just an opportunity for people to revisit some memories, though. It’s also a chance for archivists to educate people about how to properly store their films (in a cool, dry place with little temperature fluctuation) and to encourage people to consider donating their films (and not just ones of family home movies).

“It’s a way to make sure that these films remain alive. Everything is catalogued…people will be able to find it, and it’ll be in good condition and not in a hot attic,” Watrous says. “ In some instances, people don’t want to be bothered with them, or don’t know how to care for them, or they’ll transfer them to VHS or DVD and toss the film.”

Watrous points out that film, if it is stored properly, has a longer shelf life than VHS or DVD. “And if new formats come out in the future—and of course there will be—the best transfer is always from the original source.”

She says that people who donate films can sign customized contracts allowing them to retain some access and ownership rights to their films.

After seeing her family movies at last year’s fest, Petersen—a PhD student in cinema media studies at the University of Chicago—had the reels, which also included footage of the U. of C. during WWII, transferred to DVD as a Christmas present for her dad (and kept the film).

During Home Movie Day, participants are invited to stand up and talk about their movies as they’re being shown—and to keep it fun, there’s Home Movie Bingo. Each audience member gets a card—with squares like FIRST BIRTHDAY and WEDDING ANNIVERSARY—and whoever gets bingo wins a prize, like a $100 gift certificate to Abt Electronics. Last year, one person won a free transfer of film to DVD, and Petersen managed to score a one-year membership to the Gene Siskel Film Center.

“I won because I needed a monkey—and there was this one film where this ’60s housewife had a monkey as a pet and it shows it climbing on her shoulders, and her feeding it,” Petersen says. “And the family hadn’t seen it for a while and they started interacting with the images, like, Yeah, that’s my mom’s monkey!…a totally unconventional pet in the suburbs of Chicago.”

Home Movie Day is Saturday 12 at the Chicago Cultural Center. See Film listings. For more information, visit www.chicagofilmarchives.org.