You ought to be in pictures

<p>Grandpa isn&amp;#8217;t the only one who thinks those old family home movies make great viewing. Filmmaker Gideon Carson Kennedy and the Mobile Arts Council are the local organizers of Home Movie Day, an international event in its sixth year. You can celebrate this offbeat yet universal celebration Saturday, Oct. 18.

This event is free and open to the public, but the best way to participate is to contribute your own home movies to share with Mobile. Bring your 8mm or 16mm home movies to the Mobile Arts Council, downtown at 318 Dauphin Street, between 1p.m. and 3p.m. on Oct. 11. There organizers we will inspect your film, talk a little about preserving these celluloid slices of history, and sign you and your film or films up to play to an audience. Then, exactly one week later, on Oct. 18 (the official Home Movie Day) they will show your film at the new Crescent Theater, giving you a chance to share and discuss your film with your own community here in Mobile. To help you youngsters understand, it’ll be like YouTube, but old school. Why would anyone do such a thing, you ask? Organizer Gideon Kennedy, whose own work as a documentary filmmaker often involves archival footage, explains. "Because we think that they can give us all a day-to-day glimpse into the history of this city, not writ large, but instead caught in the background (and possibly the foreground) of familial moments. "We think that these old home movies can empower viewers with the potential of their own lives as points of communal interest, as opposed to the anesthetized passivity of the typical film-going experience. And we think we could do some good towards the preservation of people’s family memories. Because even though film has longevity, the means to view it and enjoy it has quickly become an obsolescence that very few know or bother with. Besides, when was the last time you watched your grandparents get married? When have your children seen your first birthday party?" If you’re not yet convinced of the importance of your old home movies, consider that Home Movie Day is a project of The Center for Home Movies, a 501©(3) organization established to provide permanent, non-profit institutional oversight for Home Movie Day and to pursue new projects relating to amateur film preservation. It has a Board of Directors full of film archivists and other smart folks who also think it’s well worth your time to go to the attic, closet, or your Grandparents’ house, and dig these gems out. Mobile’s Home Movie Day will be a sentimental journey for everyone, especially since it will take place in the long-awaited Crescent Theatre, in a beautiful restored downtown building. In a world of reality television, where millions of people have webcams and every imaginable kind of personal footage floating around out there, Home Movie Day promises to be a quaint, cool oasis. Go to www.homemovieday.com for more information about the national event, including cool tee-shirts. I’ll update you on the time of this event in my Lagniappe blog, http://blog.lagniappemobile.com/category/film.