Home Movie Day is an event held at numerous locations worldwide on October 17th, and provides people with the opportunity to share home movies, promote amateur filmmaking, and appreciate the importance of home movies as historical and cultural documents. You can learn more about Home Movie Day at http://www.centerforhomemovies.org/hmd/
If there isn’t a Home Movie Day event near you this October 17, you can still enjoy some home movies by taking a look at several home movie collections in the DLG made available by our partners at the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection, and the Georgia Historical Society.
From our partners at the Georgia Historical Society :
Albert Armor Home Movies, 1946-1949
This collection contains four reels of 16mm color film shot by Albert Armor on various trips from 1946-1949. These home movies include shots in and around Greensboro, Georgia showing rivers, forest, downtown, sawmills, and cotton gins. Most of the film shows the Armor family including E.H. Armor, as well as Anne and Bill Armor. There is also footage of a 1948 World Series game in Boston; sights in Boston; the New York skyline; and President Harry Truman’s 1949 inauguration. Three of the films were examined as part of the 2014 Association of Moving Image Archivists’ conference in Savannah, Georgia.
John Lytgen Home Movies, 1952-1956
Home movies of the Savannah-based Lytgen family from 1952 to 1956. Footage includes family recreation, holidays, and a commencement ceremony.
From our partners at the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection:
Pebble Hill Plantation Film Collection
The home movie collection features members of the extended Ohio-based Hanna family (notably, Howard Hanna, Jr., his wife, Claire, and their children) at the Thomasville, Georgia hunting plantation Pebble Hill and in Kentucky and Ohio; friends and plantation workers;, a summer home in Maine; and animals (mostly horses and dogs) that were part of life at the Pebble Hill. Several reels feature horse shows and jumping events, some being commercially-made films about such events in the 1920s. Other home movies are typical of the genre and show Christmas holidays at home, travel scenes abroad, and summertime at a swimming pool or the beach, however, the bulk of the films have to do with riding or hunting.
Andrew Avery home movie collection, 1930-195-?
The Andrew Avery Home Movie Collection documents the people and events of Bainbridge, Georgia and Decatur County from 1934 to the early 1950s in over 8000 feet of film that lasts for over 200 minutes. Mr. Avery, a UGA graduate, focused his camera on crops such as cotton, peanuts, sugar cane, and many others and the traditional farming practices of the time. Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church appears in his footage along with every other church in the county and the Temple located in Bainbridge. Also included in this amateur footage is a hospital built in Bainbridge by African-American physician Dr. Joseph Howard Griffin.
H.C. Blankenship and John Scott home movie collection, circa 1936-1967
The collection consists of footage of Gordon and Macon (including downtown scenes), Georgia, and families based in Gordon. There are also some early home movies of a kaolin mine’s operation that were transferred from their original 16mm to VHS in the 1980s ; the Walter J. Brown Media Archive does not have the original 16mm film. Also included is footage of numerous beach vacation trips in Georgia and Florida, mountain trips, picnics, a trip to England and Scotland, scenes of Central of Georgia railroad trains and stations, a mobile x-ray clinic for tuberculosis, family pets (cat and dog), birthday parties, Zoo Atlanta, Willie B. II gorilla, petting zoos, parades (including centennial of the Civil War parade and a Halloween parade), the Gordon mines, Rock Eagle, Warner Robbins, and miscellaneous family footage.
Kaliska-Greenblatt home movie collection, circa 1923-1937
The Kaliska-Greenblatt Home Movie Collection is the most locally significant film footage in the home movie collections of the Walter J. Brown Media Archives. The films were taken by William Kaliska and his friend Sidney Greenblatt of Atlanta, Georgia. Mr. Kaliska’s films date from the late 1920s to the mid-1930s and show the enthusiasm he had for taking film footage of the varied events he was involved with as a marketing manager for Coca-Cola. The films include the earliest known films of the UGA campus, being scenes at Harold Hirsch Hall (Law School), around the time of its dedication in 1932. Prominent in the group of people in that shot is Coca-Cola’s then Vice President in Charge of Sales, Harrison Jones (UGA Class of 1900), later president of the company. This same reel contains the only known footage of Moses Michael, longtime Athens resident. His wife Emma appears with Jean Kaliska in the footage, and the young couple in the segment are the Michaels’ son and daughter-in-law, David and Sarah Hall Michael and their children, at their house on Milledge, next to the Phi Epsilon House. Mr. Kaliska filmed carving work on Stone Mountain in 1929, and several university sporting events: a regional track meet at Georgia Tech’s campus which includes Olympian Ed Hamm, and the UGA vs. Tech football game in Athens in 1929. He was also in Athens in Sanford Stadium for the UGA v. Tech baseball game and Senior Parade of 1929. Mr. Kaliska also filmed Tech football player Stumpy Thomason and the bear “Bruin” who is shown drinking a Coca-Cola. In July 1930, he was filming from a window of a building along Peachtree Street in Atlanta to capture parts of the July 1930 tickertape parade for Bobby Jones’s Grand Slam. The reels also include a trip to Miami that Harold Hirsch took with family and friends. They stayed at one of Miami Beach’s most prestigious hotels, the Roney Plaza Hotel. Aside from this and other archival footage, the original Roney Plaza exists only in old photographs and postcards. Hirsch’s daughter, Ernestine, and cousin Jake’s wife Marjorie and her son Jack are shown sunning at the hotel beachfront. During the trip, Hirsch’s group cruised Biscayne Bay, and there are views of many long-gone Miami beachfront buildings, an alligator and an ostrich farm, Seminole Indians, and other cruise ships and lines which regularly traveled to Cuba. Mr. and Mrs. Kaliska were dog fanciers and owned schnauzers. A brief segment of the footage includes Beno Stein, a dog trainer in Atlanta, likely connected with the Atlanta Kennel Club, putting several dogs through a routine around a training obstacle course. One of the reels is of a garden party at the Atlanta mansion of Robert and Nell Woodruff (Coca-Cola magnate and his Athens-born wife) for the wife of a California Coca-Cola executive who was visiting Atlanta. Another depicts a day of fun at the Brookhaven Country Club in 1939 – pitching horseshoes, swimming, golfing, and several people drinking Coca-Cola. There is also footage of a ride in the Goodyear blimp “Defender” from Atlanta Airport around 1930; the footage was used in a 2007 Georgia Public Broadcasting documentary, The South Takes Flight: 100 Years of Aviation in Georgia. The Kaliskas and friends filmed a vacation to the Cumberland Gap area and Nashville, including President Polk’s grave, and Kentucky. There are summer camp scenes shot at Camp Victor, connected to the Atlanta Hebrew Orphans Home. There is also footage of the family of prominent Atlanta businessman Victor H. Kriegshaber at their home.
Louis C. Harris home movie collection, 1942-1960
The collection consists of Louis C. Harris, Sr.’s entire home movie collection (1942-1960) of silent, black-and-white and color, camera-original, 8mm and 16mm home movie footage shot between 1942 and 1960 in Italy; Algiers; Augusta, Georgia; Florida; South Carolina; and Yucca Flat, Nevada; and three commercial 16mm films. The National Film Preservation Foundation generously funded full film preservation of several reels of Mr. Harris’s home movies. Three reels of Kodachrome document a July, 8 1953 soap box derby sponsored by the Augusta Chronicle. But three months before this innocent American pastime, Mr. Harris was invited by the government, as a member of the press, to witness a 16-kiloton atomic blast at Yucca Flat, Nevada, on March 17, 1953. He made a short Kodachrome 16mm film of his trip west which includes scenes at the Phoenix, Arizona airport; day and evening shots of the Las Vegas Strip including the famous “Vegas Vic” waving cowboy neon sign erected in 1951 (the Pioneer Club casino which it advertised closed in 1995); at Indian Springs AFB where atomic bomb drop planes were being “decontaminated” with water and brooms after blast flyovers; at the test location with other journalists being briefed; the atomic blast itself; and colleagues present just after the test. His newspaper accounts of the events that week (available on microfilm in the UGA Main Library) describe the safety of the test and the need for Americans to prepare for potential nuclear war. The family’s papers and Mr. Harris’s home audio disc recordings are also at UGA.
Happy home movie viewing!
