The University of Georgia’s Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection will celebrate the importance of home movies with a weeklong series of virtual events, including family activities and a rarely seen private look at the early days of Athens rock band The B-52s.
The events, which also include a discussion involving the preservation of an amateur horror movie just in time for Halloween, are part of the national Home Movie Day celebration, which is hosted annually by the Center for Home Movies. The three events also help mark the 25th anniversary of the Brown Media Archives, a unit of the UGA Libraries that houses one of the most robust media collections in the United States.
The festivities begin on Tuesday, Oct. 13 with a virtual tour of Brown Media Archive’s home movie collection by several members of the faculty and staff, who will share some favorite images stored in the Special Collections Building vault and answer questions about the preservation of home movies and how the public can access these films for free.
During the 2 p.m. Facebook Live event, archivist Margie Compton will discuss an early 28mm home movie found in the Pebble Hill Plantation Film Collection that features the famous Broadway actress Annie Russell and her husband Oswald Yorke at their home in Maine in 1917. Callie Holmes, digitization unit head, will discuss her personal connection to the 1966 home movie, “Peach Growing in South Carolina,” by noted Amateur Cinema League filmmaker Walter Bergmann. Finally, audiovisual technicians Thomas May and Tyler Ortel will discuss their work adding voice over and sound design to a recut of the 1960s home movie, “Tales of Blood and Horror.”
On Thursday, Oct. 15 at 7 p.m., another Facebook Live event features artist Keith Bennett, who will discuss his B-52s home movie collection from the 1970s and 1980s. In his home movies, Bennett chronicled the early rise of the Athens band on Super 8 camera, as the boyfriend and then husband of singer Cindy Wilson. Viewers will see his footage, now digitized and housed at the Brown Media Archives, featuring a behind-the-scenes look at the band as well as early performances in Central Park in New York and the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, as well as international tours.
To conclude the week, Brown Media will host a virtual family day event on Saturday, Oct. 17 encouraging kids and parents to create and share their own home movies. Participants can make flipbooks and play home movie bingo with free craft kits, which will be available for pick up at Treehouse Kid + Craft beginning Oct. 12. After experimenting with their own home movies on cell phones or other technology, families are encouraged to share their amateur films on social media, using the hashtag, #HomeMovieDay and tagging both @BMAatUGA and @HomeMovieDay.
For more information on Brown Media Archives weeklong celebration of Home Movie Day 2020, email kdotson@uga.edu.
Virtual Tour: Home Movie Collections
Tuesday, October 13, 2020
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Facebook Live
https://www.facebook.com/events/406907736958988
Virtual Discussion: Keith Bennett B-52's Home Movie Collection
Thursday, October 15, 2020
7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Facebook Live
https://www.facebook.com/events/793334338150287
Virtual Family Day: Home Movie Day 2020
Saturday, October 17, 2020
Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/events/667637550825255