If your city has a Home Movie Day 2016 event, it is likely to be taking place in the next week or two.

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If your town does not celebrate Home Movie Day, the Center for Home Movies can show you how to change that.

In 2003, motivated by increasing awareness of the role home movies can play in providing a fuller picture of social history, the Center for Home Movies in Madison, Wisconsin, took the lead in urging archivists and organizations around the world to host Home Movie Day activities. The events are designed to increase interest in the collecting and preserving of home movies, and to show holders of family films how to care for them.

Center for Home Movies 2013 promo for Home Movie Day

This year, events are taking place in at least 15 countries, in 60 cities (see list, below). For example, in Columbia, South Carolina, on Saturday 15 October 2016, librarians and archivists from the University of South Carolina will screen home movies at The Nickelodeon, the local art-house cinema on the main steet of town. Organizers will display home-movie equipment, answer questions, give advice, and examine the home movies of anyone who brings them along.

Scenes from the 2014 Home Movie Day in Hanover, New Hampshire; Creative Commons

Some events exhibit special collections. For example, at The Cinema Museum in London on 15 October 2016, organizers of a free, day-long event are screening items from the Bryan Forbes Collection; the material includes footage that the late English film director, screenwriter, film producer, actor, and novelist shot on movie sets and at home with his wife Nanette Newman and friends and colleagues including Peter Sellers, Michael Caine, and Katharine Hepburn. Also on the program are home movies that director David Lean shot on a family vacation in Italy in about 1950.

Some of the material being screened will come from the British Film Institute’s Britain on Film project which has released a collection of Home Movies & Amateur Film on its BFI Player, free of charge.

The London event will also include material from the London’s Screen Archives Collection: films of London history seen through the eyes of families and communities.

Throughout the day, films will be shown that have been brought in by members of the public, who may also attend a free film clinic where archivists will assess and provide advice about home movies.

The Center for Home Movies has been gathering some examples of films shown at events around the world on its Home Grown Movies site, such as this footage from pre-revolution Cuba:

The Center provides advice on how to care for home movies and make “access” copies. The Center has received a grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources to develop a Home Movie Archives Database which, together with its existing Home Movie Registry, will allow donors, scholars, and documentarians to search for home movies and home-movie collections in scattered archives.

The Center maintains a small collection at the Library of Congress’s Packard Campus in Culpeper, Virginia, but its main role, when it comes to collections, is to show archives how to build and maintain them, and to help donors find homes for their home movies.

In 2010, the Center held the Digitization and Access Summit at the Library of Congress’s Packard Campus of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center. Participants explored such issues as cataloging and digitizing amateur film and how increasing online access to home movies would affect home movie makers, families, researchers, documentary filmmakers, and the public. A final report is on the Center for Home Movie’s web site.

— MIAN

Countries, cities, and 2016 dates of Home Movie Day events (for venues, contacts, and other details, see the Center for Home Movies website):

Albania: Tirana, 23 October

Australia: Melbourne, 16 November

Austria: Vienna, 15 October

Canada: Alberta 15 October; Vancouver 15 October; Toronto 15 October; Montreal, 22 October

Chile: Santiago, 13 October

Czech Republic: Prague, 15 October

Germany: Frankfurt, 15 October

Israel: Jerusalem, 18 October

Italy: Piemonte, 15 October

Japan: Aomori, Hirosaki, 29 October; Tohoku, Sendai, Miyagi, 15 October; Tokyo, 16 October; Jimbocho, Tokyo, 5 November; Chofu-city, Tokyo, 30 October; Yanesen, Tokyo, 15 October; Kansai, Hirano, Osaka, 30 October; Naniwa, Osaka, 12 December; Kobe, 15 October; Ehime, 15 October; Nagano, Iizuna, Nagano, TBA January 2017; Azumino, Nagano, TBA

Mexico: Mexico City, 15 October; Puebla, 8 October

Poland: Katowice, TBA November; Warsaw, TBA November

Spain: Navarra (Pamplona), 13 October

Switzerland: Berne, 15 October; Windisch, 15 October

United Kingdom: London, 15 October; Motherwell, North Lanarkshire, Scotland, 17 October

United States: Tucson, 15 October; Los Angeles, 15 October; San Francisco, TBA; Santa Clarita CA, 15 October; Alamosa CO, 14 October; Boulder CO, 15 October; New Haven CT, 15 October; Washington DC, 15 October; Milledgeville GA, 1 October; Chicago, 15 October; Lexington KY, 25 October; Louisville KY 16 October; Georgetown MA 15 October; Baltimore, 15 October; Boston/Cambridge, 6 May 2017; Williamstown MA, TBA; Minneapolis, 13 July; Hanover NH, 15 October; Pleasantville NY, 15 October; Rochester NY, 15 October; Asheville NC, 15 October; Blowing Rock NC, 19 March 2017; Durham NC, 13 February 2017; Raleigh NC, 15 October; Pittsburgh PA, 5 November; Columbia SC, 15 October; Brookfield WI, 2 April 2017