CHICAGO — It might not be Sundance, but you probably have a video you can submit to this local film festival in your attic right now.
"Chicago Home Video Day" is a free event Saturday at Nightingale Cinema in Noble Square to celebrate the dying medium of home movies on tape.
The event is BYOB and BYO-home-movie, and organizers hope screenings will be "hilarious, touching and uncomfortable in a way that only home video can be."
Attendees of the event, which goes from 1-5 p.m. at 1084 N. Milwaukee Ave., can have five minutes of a home movie screened, which they can either introduce or narrate as it's happening.
Rare footage from Video Data Bank, Media Burn Archive, Chicago Film Archives and other local collections will also be shown, and there will be raffles and prizes throughout the day.
Submitted footage must be in VHS, VHS-C, Betamax, Hi-8, Video 8 or Mini-DV.
The event isn't only a celebration of home movies, but a teaching tool for the archivists who will be on hand to help repair tapes and advise on how to preserve them.
"These mini-archives may be rendered unplayable sooner than most people think. Not only are machines capable of playing these items becoming harder to find, but the very magnetic tape itself is subject to rapid and sudden decay; in a matter of years, these ground-level records of everyday life in the city, from the quotidian to the totally bizarre, may be gone forever," read a statement about the event.
The event was inspired by "Home Movie Day," an international day that has celebrated 8mm, 16mm and Super-8 formats since 2003.
"Home movies are an important cultural document of everyone's lives, everyone's past," said Anne Wells, collections manager for the Chicago Film Archives.
For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here:
