Home Movie

Every October, the International Home Movie Day is held around the world in many institutions that preserve and research visual and audiovisual heritage. This holiday is designed to raise the issue of preserving home archives, as well as to gather local communities to share their own films and memories of the past.

On this occasion, we offer a program of home movies that have been collected by the Urban Media Archive in recent years. Although this genre is quite conventional, and it is not difficult to guess in advance what was shot on a private film of 8 mm format. Usually, these are children, travel, leisure and recreation, but each frame contains personal stories. Some films in the program are supplemented by behind-the-scenes stories of their authors or heroes. Please, find the program:

• Volodymyr Trushkevich, Dog Walking, 1978, 12 min
  The slopes of Kaiserwald have long been a place for recreation and walks of Lviv citizen. Many came here with their pets. Just look how different and cute they are. Important family members were documented by the author, and one of the main characters recalls about her dogs many years later, in a behind-the-scenes interview.
• Volodymyr Duda, Son, late 1970s, 7 min
  After collecting several years of filming about how his son was growing up, Volodymyr Duda made a documentary. Forty years later, an adult son, a musician Yurko Duda, added a sound track to his father’s work, and composed his own music for it.
• Greg (Hryhoriy Porytsky), Untitled, 1981, 14 min
  The non-mainstream artists also filmed their children, making home movies. The film is a mixture of parties of Lviv hippies, carefree flannerie in the city and sweet walks with his daughter – Greg’s close friend is in focus. Warning! – the film contains footage incompatible with the idea of teachers about raising children.
• Yuri Kondratenko, Untitled, 1982, 14 min
  Entertainment in the spring garden next to the student dormitory, and winter skiing in the Carpathians. The film documents the romantic routine and travels of a young couple in the early 1980s. The film is complemented by an off-screen interview where the main character shares her memories, watching the film for the first time in decades.
• Serhiy Pashchenko, Wellcome to Moldavia!, 1980, 9 min A family trip to Moldova to visit relatives turned into a full movie and a pleasant summer memory. The tape is voiced-over with the stories of the authors and heroes who share memories of forty years ago.
• Witold Romer, Family Chronicle, mid-1930s, 11 min
  The Romer family lived on a cozy hill on the present streets of Cyril and Methodius and Mendeleev, two generations were neighbors. In the family footage, hese places and their dwellings have been recorded since the mid-1930s. On the screen, we can see the parents of Witold, Eugenius and Jadwiga Romer, as well as his children.
• Ihor Kozak, Meetings, 1982, 12 min
  Traveling with friends and meeting people you haven’t seen in a long time is a great opportunity to make a film. However, it was not enough for the author to simply document the event, so he started a small provocation, and hid himself, filming everything with a hidden camera. In the accompanying audio commentary, the author explains his plan and mentions a meeting of friends in Vilnius in 1982.

The film screening is part of the public program for the exhibition "Society with a Movie Camera" that invites you to look into the world of amateur films and wants to share the history of this phenomenon, to display unique and previously unseen materials. It intends to attract attention and highlight the conversation about the importance of preserving the heritage of film amateurs.

Opening hours

• Wednesday – Friday from 12.00 to 19.00
• Saturday and Sunday from 12.00 to 18.00
  Free admission

The exhibition and the accompanying program are implemented within the project "Society with a Movie Camera: History of Visual Modes and Creation Practices in Ukraine" with the support of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation.

The position of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation may not coincide with the opinion of the authors.

Credits

Cover Image: still shot from the film "Meetings" by Ihor Kozak