Warm greetings for the new year from the Center for Home Movies! The past two years have been especially difficult ones for so many people all over the world, but we are grateful for the window onto both our collective past and the possibilities for brighter days ahead that the new year can open, and we hope you are feeling this too.
Speaking of possibilities, we are thrilled to kick off 2022 by announcing the addition of two new members to our Board of Directors: C. Díaz and Justin D. Williams. Justin and C. bring unique and invaluable perspectives to CHM, each in their own way, combining creative media-making and education with a participatory approach to archiving and preservation rooted in their local communities of Chicago and Texas’s Rio Grande Valley. We are so happy to welcome them to CHM and to introduce them to you!
C. Díaz
C. Díaz is an artist and archivist from the Rio Grande Valley, Texas. Working primarily with film and video, their work explores the relationship between our cerebral landscapes and the natural environment. As an archivist, C.’s current focus is on the collection and preservation of home movies and oral histories from the Rio Grande Valley region. In 2021, they co-founded ENTRE, an artist-run film center and regional archive in the RGV. ENTRE’s mission is to provide access, support, and resources for the community to make films, and document and archive their experience of life in the Valley. Since 2014, C. has been working as a film colorist on various projects such as feature and short films, music videos, commercials, documentaries, and art installations. Their color work has been exhibited in various festivals and art shows such as Locarno, Berlinale, The Shed, and The Hammer Museum. C.’s color remastering experience spans feature film restorations to small gauge home movies and amateur films. They have facilitated workshops and webinars on color correction and color remastering for the Echo Park Film Center and the Association of Moving Image Archivists.
Justin D. Williams
Justin D. Williams is a steward of culture and memory and a facilitator of multimedia projects that study personal and communal narratives in order to preserve and elevate their importance in our society. He is the Project Archivist & Manager of the South Side Home Movie Project (SSHMP). Prior to joining SSHMP he designed and led the Digital Storytelling Initiative on behalf of the Logan Center for the Arts, where he designed and co-founded the Production Institute, a program that trains South Side filmmakers in the essential tools and skills needed to tell their stories. Justin has also worked for award-winning companies Kartemquin Films, StoryCorps, City Bureau, and has partnered with dozens of organizations to design and produce digital storytelling projects.
The “official” Home Movie Day date for 2021 is Saturday, October 16th, but like last year we welcome events throughout October and beyond – any day can be Home Movie Day! With the continuing global COVID-19 pandemic, we expect many virtual events again this year, but also look forward to the return of some in-person or hybrid gatherings when and where they are safe.
We witnessed an incredible amount of innovation and dedication from Home Movie Day hosts around the world last year and the Center for Home Movies encourages both new and returning hosts to look to these examples for inspiration in planning your 2021 events. HMD events were held in over 40 locations in 2020, from Tokyo to Bogotá to Bucksport, Maine and Los Angeles, California. A successful outdoor, socially distanced in-person Home Movie Day took place in Providence, Rhode Island, and a wide array of virtual programs were held, including small gatherings over zoom with live commentary heard over the films – for the closest approximation of the communal feeling of an in-person event – to curated and pre-recorded programs that were made available on Vimeo and Youtube for the entire month of October. Events in Los Angeles and San Francisco successfully merged the best of both in-person and virtual events by offering pre-curated home movie finds on twitch and youtube and engaging the virtual audience with commentary, questions, and even bingo over the accompanying chat feature of each platform.
We expect to see equal amounts of innovation and creativity this time around from our group of dedicated volunteer hosts. The Elmont Memorial Library in New York, embracing the motto that every day is home movie day has a virtual event planned on September 14th, “National Film Registry Home Movies & Independent Films”, as part of a series on the National Film Registry that will feature commentary from current CHM board member CK Ming.
With numerous virtual events occurring throughout the day on October 17th, you may be wondering how you’ll be able to tune in for them all. CHM has your solution! Starting at 3pm Eastern Daylight Time (GMT -4), your HMD Boston hosts will be hosting a live broadcast switching between events happening in Montana, Vienna, Belfast, North Vancouver, NYC, New Hampshire, Bogota, and more! This live feed can be found on homemovieday.com, where you can also browse and visit events from the map and the calendar. We’re so grateful to be able to celebrate Home Movie Day in virtual space with you!
Because of the disruption to the world that COVID-19 has caused, in 2020 Home Movie Day will also include an online component in addition to the traditional in-person screenings. Home Movie Day will still be a series of local events, but shared on the Internet instead of just being held in individual venues. The Center for Home Movies will be creating a web portal that will host digital video presentations of home movies from around the world. Viewers will be able to watch live and pre-recorded home movie screenings organized by organizations and individuals.
Just as Home Movie Day is not one event, but rather a coordinated group of activities organized by local hosts around the world, so too will this virtual Home Movie Day be whatever format each organizer wishes it to be. For more information about how to participate, see the HMD 2020 Page.
