Paul Gordon shows a guest that there’s a lot more to setting up a film projector than just pressing play.
For nearly 40 years, Bernard Connelly’s film reels collected dust in a cardboard box. But he recently brushed off that the layer of dust to share his 1975 family moments at the Mayfair Theatre.
Connelly joined an intimate crowd at the historic theatre for Home Movie Day last weekend. The big screen featured two hours worth of vintage videos brought in by Ottawa residents. Home Movie Day is an international event that celebrates amateur filmmakers in communities around the world.
“These films I have are unedited, so I can just imagine what they will be like,” says Connelly.
“It has been a long time since I have seen them, because I do not have the equipment to watch them anymore.”
Between screenings, Canadian filmmaker Kelly Egan gave quick tips on how to properly store and preserve films.
The most common mistake among people, she says, is sealing videos in plastic bags.
“Film is a breathing substance and it needs air. A lot of people think that it is best to seal it away from the world and it will preserve it better and it doesn’t,” Egan says.
John Yemen, Co-founder of Lost Dominion Screening Collective, explains that if film is properly stored, it can last about 100 years longer than video. An upstairs closet that has a consistent medium temperature is an ideal storage place, he says, while basements tend to be damp and cold, which can lead to deterioration of the film.
Home Movie Day was organized by the Lost Dominion Screening Collective, located on Somerset Street West. The event coincides with the screening collective’s effort in bringing archival and Canadian films to the public.
Home Movie Day started in 2002, after a group of film archivists in the U.S. became concerned that home movies were not being stored properly and being thrown out.
The day, which has since become a worldwide event, aims at educating the public on the value of properly storing films, while coming together as a community to watch each other’s home-movie treasures.
“We thought that a really fun event would help get people thinking again about the history of Ottawa, the history of film in Ottawa and the general educational effort of film preservation,” says Yemen.
The home movies, a mix of both black and white and colour, dating back as far as 1917, played on a variety of vintage projectors depending on the format of the film.
The Mayfair helped make Home Movie Day possible by donating its space for the event. Being the only theatre in Ottawa that still projects movies on film, Egan says, the venue was a perfect fit.
“We are all watching our movies together around the world, which is really a beautiful way of thinking about it,” says Egan. “Many Home Movie Day events happen in libraries. It is very rare that you have a facility so wonderful as the Mayfair to put on a screening.”
Ottawa celebrated Home Movie Day once before in 2007 at Club SAW art gallery.Yemen was among the attendees at the gallery six years ago, and he says he wanted to revive the commemoration in Ottawa.
The main challenge in planning Home Movie Day this year, he says, was determining whether people in Ottawa still had old films to begin with. Had this event started 10 years ago, Yemen says, he may have been able convince people to keep their original films even after they converted it to a digitized format.
“If film is properly stored, it can look better than many of the movies that are shot today,” says Yemen.
Not everyone has discarded their home movies; a few videos could not be played because of a shortage of time.
If the Lost Dominion is able to acquire another donated venue and attract enough volunteers, Yemen explains, they plan to participate in Home Movie Day again next year.
“These films become more and more interesting as time goes on,” says Yemen. “They really are great time capsules of the past and it is wonderful that we can all share these moments with each other.”