By Jacqueline Grima
The team from Manchester Metropolitan University’s North West Film Archive recently hosted an event at Manchester Central Library to celebrate Digital Home Movie Day. The aim of the event was to celebrate the family films of the last few years that were ‘born digital’.
The North West Film Archive, which celebrates its 40th birthday this year, is one of the largest public moving image collections in Britain. Its aim is to rescue and ensure the survival of films and videos about the North West in order to educate future generations about the history of the region. The collection is home to both professional and amateur film footage that dates back to the 1890s, when the first moving images appeared.
At the library event, the archive team invited members of the public to bring along any digital home movies that might be trapped on a mobile phone, tablet or memory card and have them retrieved by experts to enjoy once again.
Director of the North West Film Archive Marion Hewitt said, “Home Movie Day is a global event that happens in October. It aims to encourage people to bring along their own home movies and have them digitised in order to secure their future.”
She added, “Home movies are a kind of social history. They record the changes in people’s social habits. For example, when people began to holiday abroad.”
The event was held in collaboration with Archives Plus and formed part of Manchester Met’s Research in Arts and Humanities (RAH!) 2017/18 programme
The next North West Film Archive event is a screening of Dawson City: Frozen Time at HOME, Manchester on Friday 27th October, part of the Manchester Science Festival. The film pieces together footage from 500 films that were recently discovered buried beneath a sub-arctic swimming pool in Canada. A Q&A with Marion Hewitt, filmmaker Bill Morrison, conservation experts and HOME’s Artistic Director of Visual Arts Sarah Perks will follow the film. For more information, visit the North West Film Archive website.
For more information about the upcoming events in the RAH! Programme, visit www.mmu.ac.uk/rah
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