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.
The Orphan Film Symposium has long been one of the premier venues for screening, discussing, and understanding home movies by scholars, archivists, and filmmakers, and it has been a cherished supporter of the Center for Home Movies for decades. This year it was moved online instead of its planned meeting in Amsterdam, making it accessible to the wider world. The theme for the third day (May 28th) is “Migration” (following days dedicated to Water and Climate), so the Center for Home Movies would like to share a film from our “Homegrown Movies” project. The Reyes Family home movies were shot in Michoacán, Mexico, Yuma, Arizona, and Salinas, California on Super 8 by Manuel Reyes in 1978-79, silent with commentary by Verónica Reyes-Escudero & Jennifer Jenkins. Reyes Family Home Movies on Vimeo
