Film Overview

Now available from the Center for Home Movies, the Living Room Cinema DVD features 22 films that span nearly a century of social, personal, and filmmaking history. All films were originally screened at Home Movie Day events in 2003 and 2004, in locations ranging from Japan to Boston and London. Many films include new commentaries from the filmmakers or their families, making this compilation the first to present home movies as historical documents in their own right, rather than as components of documentaries or collage works.

Contributors to the DVD include Robbins Barstow, whose 1936 amateur Tarzan narrative is now part of the motion picture collection at the Library of Congress; experimental filmmaker Jeanne Liotta; and New York general store proprietor Kenny Shopsin. The films cover a range of subjects, and even familiar events present surprises: At a wedding reception in 1945, guests dance while communicating in sign language; a family celebrates their daughter’s first birthday by burying her placenta; and former Dead Boys guitarist Cheetah Chrome makes an appearance in a New Haven teenager’s footage of high school kids in 1980.

In his introductory essay, film collector and historian Rick Prelinger notes "This DVD is a reference point and a beginning, the first intentional compilation of distinguished, exemplary, surreal and funny home movies. It exposes the best of Home Movie Day to a broader world."