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"This is absolutely mind-blowing quality stuff. I thought some of these were essentially unsalvageable."
Dan
Elk Grove, CA
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San Francisco, August 6, 2007
By Ruthe Stein, SF Chronicle Senior Movie Writer
(The following is an excerpt. To read the entire article, click this link to the Chronicle article)
Family memories in reel time
From the 1930s to '70s, every major occasion called for Dad or an older brother to haul out a bulky camera - amateur moviemaking being primarily a male domain. But with the invention of portable video equipment, which keeps getting smaller, cheaper and more instantaneous, this old-fashioned documentation has fallen by the wayside, buried under scrapbooks in damp closets where the vintage celluloid is at risk of decomposing. Screens and projectors long ago were consigned to a garbage heap.
To call attention to these relics, Saturday has been declared International Home Movie Day. The celebration is endorsed by Martin Scorsese and John Waters, who states in his inimitable voice, "if you've got one, whip it out and show it now." The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will screen Alfred Hitchcock's and Steve McQueen's home movies. Closer to home, the San Francisco Media Archive, a Mission District preservation center for amateur movies, is hosting continuous events.
"People like to think that home movies are just family picnics and that their value is mostly camp," said archive Director Steven Parr. "But really they are the only moving images made without a financial incentive. While they're usually of joyous events, I have seen movies from the 1940s of wakes in homes where the body was still there. That had been pretty much an American tradition. People documented the social, cultural and political environment of their time." The most famous home movie, he points out, is Abraham Zapruder's 8mm film of President Kennedy's assassination.
Digital Pickle is a proud Sponsor of Home Movie Day - preserving movies for years to come.
For more information, visit http://www.digitalpickle.com.
Please Contact:
Arik Paran
(415) 861-4565
arik@digitalpickle.com
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