The University of Central Florida wants your home movies.
UCF will host a Home Movie Day celebration this weekend as part of the 9th annual international Home Movie Day, which will be observed in more than 50 cities worldwide.
The UCF project is jointly hosted by the Film, History and Library Special Collections departments and will run from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 15, at the Center for Emerging Media, 500 W. Livingston Street in downtown Orlando.
Organizers are asking the community to dig through attics and old boxes for film reels they’d like to share at Home Movie Day or donate to the UCF Library’s Home Movie Archive Special Collection. Donators are welcome to bring films to the free Oct. 15 screening or drop them off prior to the event at the UCF Film office in room 121 of the Nicholson School of Communication.
Volunteers will be on-site at Home Movie Day to help clean and repair old films and collect archive donations.
The event will not only teach amateur filmmakers how to preserve old movie reels, but will continue UCF’s initiative to become a leading institution for archiving, studying and restoring 8mm, 16mm and Super 8 films. UCF also will continue its tradition of offering free digital transfers of films, which are donated to the university’s archive.
“Preserving and cataloging these precious pieces of history is a major step in achieving a local archive of images from the past,” said Stephen Schlow, interim chair of UCF’s Film department. “You’re seeing in home movies life as it was lived.”
Filmmakers and archivists say home movies offer a new perspective on society: What did people wear? What did they drive? How did the live? Numerous home movie gems have already been discovered locally, everything from NASA’s first launches to the construction of Walt Disney World.
The first Home Movie Day was held in 2003. Today the Los Angeles-based Center for Home Movies runs the celebration, which aims to highlight the cultural significance of home movies and the need to properly preserve these important works. The events encourage audience discussion of each film, filmmaker and the images shared.