Home>Asahi Newspaper 2004.07.23

Asahi Newspaper 2004.07.23

“Spotlight on the 8mm films lying around at home” [Nagoya]

Family trips, school festivals, birthday parties and marriage ceremonies…. various memories are recorded on 8mm films. Do you have such 8mm somewhere in your house? To turn the spotlight on those small gauge films which were forgotten since the video camera became popular, people who are involved in film preservation and restoration picked every second Saturday in August as “Home Movie Day”, and more than 30 cities all over the world are going to hold screening events at the same time. This year’s Home Movie Day is 14th of August. On that day, in Nagoya as well, there are screenings and now films are widely sought. (Junko Fukatsu) “Home Movie Day” was started in 2003 by some members of AMIA, the Association of Moving Image Archivists (the main office is located in the US) – AMIA has members from more than 30 countries. The films HMD shows are brought in by people who live in the local area. The record of the family or indie works for school festivals or anything at all is acceptable. It doesn’t matter about the contents, the level of the shooting technique or the genre. The purpose of HMD is to consider these films as cultural heritage, whatever they show, to pass the history and our memory to future generations and promote the charm of the films’ look and the importance of film preservation activities. From Japan, StickyFilms agreed with the idea, and took part in Toyohashi City in Aichi and Fukuoka City last year. In Toyohashi City, a local Jazz cafe gave them the place free for HMD, and 12 films were shown. Other than the private films from amateur filmmakers, there was footage of the baseball matches of Chunichi Dragons, which provided local color. The film owners explained, “That woman is actually my mum”, and people asked things like “Where did you shoot this?”. The audience enjoyed watching these nostalgic films. Kae Ishihara from StickyFilms says, “Most people were hesitant and asked if their good for nothing films would really do for HMD. At first they didn’t realise how valuable their films are. Even the films purely for private purposes, I think it’s good fun to watch them together.” Another member, Satoe Tamura says, “It’s a nice feeling to watch 8mm with the sound of the projector. It must be a new experience for young people who only know home movies shot on video.” 8mm cameras began to be imported from the US from 1932, and gained popularity with the public after the war. Easy use cartridge types appeared in the middle of the 60s and sales expanded, with 1,930,000 sold at the peak in 1977, however the production of both cameras and projectors was stopped and replaced by the home use video camera in the 80s. The film that comes out of the camera is the only existing original, so the screening chances are also limited. There is a service whereby you can transfer 8mm onto video or DVD. What Ishihara and others are worried about is that some people might just discard the original film after the transfer. “You never know the durability of video or DVD copies. Nobody can tell what sort of new media will appear in the near future. If only the original film is kept safe, you can make the best copy from it again.” In the US or Europe, there are many regional archives which actively collect private films as part of cultural heritage in the area. Also there are some artists who create new works using this old found footage. In Japan, the national archives never accept private collections other than those films with tremendous historical value, so the preservation condition is all depending on each owner. “We could give some information about how to store the films at home properly, and could introduce the labs dealing with 8mm transfer, or even about other formats like 16mm, we could give as much advice on how to preserve them as we can,” Ishihara says. She is hoping that HMD is going to spread all over Japan, like in the US which has so many states with a HMD rep.