Al Larvick Conservation Fund holds touring and single live events to celebrate and educate themes around home movies and amateur cinema recordings. Events include workshops and screenings with guest speakers from ALCF, partnering historical societies, libraries, regional businesses, genealogists and most importantly grantees and other individual home movie enthusiasts.
Events are intended to highlight the significance of what is captured in home movies as well as how these recordings can be used as a tool for keeping cultural history alive and meaningful today. The fund's dates often develop into a dialogue between speakers and attendees as well as become a resource for individuals and organizations with home movie collections.
Live screenings with speakers can give home and hobbyist movies historical and familial context and also provoke a positive cross-cultural and intergenerational story sharing experience. The events can bring awareness around the importance of memory sharing and saving micro-histories recorded in home movies by community members.
Beginning in 2017, these events will also include oral history recordings of grantees and volunteer audience members.
2024
A Decade of Preservation: Al Larvick Fund’s Home Movie Collaborations
The Association of Moving Image Archivists conference panel session will feature contributions from board members, vendors, and grant recipients, showcasing the organization’s transformative impact and its role in revitalizing personal and community histories, while also addressing its limitations. Learn more here.
Weird and Wonderful: The Satirical Films of Tim Smith
Presented by the Oregon Historical Society and organized by archivist Matthew Cowan at Seattle’s Northwest Film Forum Sunday, January 21st, 2024.
These quirky, creative and artistic 8mm and 16mm works are a time capsule into old Portland. Smith’s films were often send-ups of popular genres of the era, from the cautionary tale of gang recruitment in "Salmon Street Saga", (featuring music by Dick Dale and his Del-Tones and The Cheers), to the unforgettable anti-drug yarn of "Drugs: Killers or Dillers?” Not to be missed. Films were conserved and made accessible through a 2019 Al Larvick Nation Grant awarded to OHS. Learn more about the Tim Smith Moving Image Collection here.
Past events:
2023
CHRONICLING AND CREATING: HOME MOVIES & HOBBYIST FILMMAKING
A series of three programs depicting the life and interests of home movies and amateur makers. These collections from the Al Larvick Fund explore modes of registering events and interpreting stories that are both personal and broad, with narrations and scores by their collection holders and historians. Imbuing moments of yesterday within a contemporary context, the films in Chronicling and Creating present to viewers an opportunity to contemplate how we remember our private and collective past. Additionally, these works inspire links between history and the present, as well as how their creators’ decisions influence our interpretation of both.
Program curated and edited by Dwight Swanson and Kirsten Larvick. Sound mix by Christina Smith. Music by Matt Pond, Chris Hansen, and George Ingmire.
Learn more here.
To purchase ticket to individual programs:
HOME AND AWAY: THE AMERICAN FRONTIER
October 20 at 7:00 PM
ALONG THE EASTERN SEABOARD: THE FILMS OF ARTHUR H. VIRTUE
October 21 at 7:00 PM
THE MURDER MYSTERIES OF DWIGHT CORE
October 22 at 7:00 PM
Learn more here.
Weird and Wonderful: The Satirical Films of Tim Smith
Presented by the Oregon Historical Society and organized by archivist Matthew Cowan at the legendary Hollywood Theatre, Portland Oregon on July 25th, 2023.
These quirky, creative and artistic 8mm and 16mm works are a time capsule into old Portland. Smith’s films were often send-ups of popular genres of the era, from the cautionary tale of gang recruitment in "Salmon Street Saga", (featuring music by Dick Dale and his Del-Tones and The Cheers), to the unforgettable anti-drug yarn of "Drugs: Killers or Dillers?” Not to be missed. Films were conserved and made accessible through a 2019 Al Larvick Nation Grant awarded to OHS. Learn more about the Tim Smith Moving Image Collection here.
2021
home movie christmas day
An immersive cinematographic experience in Christmas memories through home movies from all over the world curated by the Superottimisti and in partnership with National Museum of Cinema Torino in Italy. Online and live events include:
In-Person: December 23, italian 5.30-6.30 pm Screening of a selection of home movies dedicated on Christmas form 18 archives worldwide. The screening will be accompanied by a live soundtrack performed by the string Quartet Archidee. Free entry; location: Infopoint of Venaria Reale, Piazza Don Alberione.
In Person: From December 24 to December 30, italian 5.30-10.30 pm Videoinstallation of a large selection of home movies dedicated on Christmas form 18 archives worldwide, screened in a public wall. Free entry; location: Infopoint of Venaria Reale, Piazza Don Alberione.
Online: December 25, italian 6.00-7.00 pm online event (on the Superottimisti and National Museum of Cinema facebook pages) with a selection of home movies dedicated on Christmas form 18 archives worldwide, music by the string Quartet Archidee.
Participating archives: Superottimisti archive, Torino, Italy; Film library of the italian National Museum of Cinema, Torino, Italy; Cinescatti Lab80 film, Bergamo, Italy; Cineteca Sarda – Società Umanitaria, Cagliari, Italy; RI-PRESE memory keepers, Venezia, Italy; Re-framing home movies, Milano, Italy; 8mmezzo, Livorno, Italy; CRICD-Filmoteca Regionale Siciliana, Palermo, Italy; Home Movies, Bologna, Italy; Lo sguardo e la voce, Università Suor Orsola Benicasa di Napoli e Reggia di Caserta, Italy; Cinémémoire, Marsiglia, France; Memorias Celuloides, Región de Murcia, Spain; Chicago Film Archives, USA; Al Larvick Conservation fund, USA; Deserted Films, USA; Moving Image Research Collections MIRC, University of South Carolina, USA; Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound, USA.
Tales from the prairie: north dakota families’ home movies
In celebration of American Archives Month, the State Historical Society of North Dakota and the Al Larvick Conservation Fund present a program of North Dakota home movies. The screening will highlight collections shot on film by movie makers from the 1940s through the 1980s and will include new narrations recorded by the filmmakers and their families. The presentations will show how the Historical Society uses its home movie collections in its exhibits, and what films are being preserved by the Al Larvick Fund's biennial North Dakota grant. Through these homemade histories, we can recognize ourselves and our everyday lives but also be transported to less familiar times and places, showing us both intimate and ordinary family activities, as well as public events such as rodeos, parades, and town and farm life. The program will premiere online through the Historical Society’s YouTube channel from October 23rd through November 6th, and will screen in the Great Plains Theatre at the Heritage Center in Bismarck from October 23rd through the 29th, 2021. Learn more here…
THE AL LARVICK FUND PRESENTS: REGIONAL FILMS OF POLITICS AND PARODY
This online series celebrates the achievements of the Al Larvick Fund by showcasing a selection of regional films that have been preserved with its support. The series encompasses home movies created by U.S. servicemen stationed abroad, during and immediately after WWII; documentation of appearances by John F. and Robert Kennedy; filmmaker Jim Hubbard’s films of LGBTQ activism in the 1970s-80s; and the hilariously resourceful and inventive film parodies made by Tim Smith and friends (including future SIMPSONS creator Matt Groening) in the same period in Portland, Oregon. Regional Films of Politics and Parody is in collaboration with and hosted by Anthology Film Archives May 12th through June 8th, 2021. Special thanks to Jed Rapfogel. Learn more here…
2019
Home Movie Digitization and Access: New Models for Outreach
Association for Moving Image Archivists Annual Conference, Baltimore, MD, November 16th, 2019. Learn more here…
HOME MOVIE DAY: A CELEBRATION OF REGIONAL FILMMAKING
This Home Movie Day: A Celebration of Regional Filmmaking will showcase the home movie maker by exhibiting and sharing the stories of North Dakota’s regional filmmakers. Two of these events also invite the general public to bring their Super 8, 8mm films and VHS tapes along with a hard drive for up to 20 minutes of complimentary digitizing per person and to share their history captured in their home movies. RSVPs are encouraged as well as early drop off of material for digitization. Events take place on 10/19, 10/20 and 10/22/2019 in Bismarck, Valley City and Grand Forks, North Dakota. Read more here…
2017
Home Movies hit the road
Al Larvick Conservation Fund and its partners explore the recording of travel experience from decades past. August, 21st through August 23rd 2017 in Bismarck, Valley City and Fargo, North Dakota. Read more here...
2016
alcf north dakota home movie tour
Exploring Home Movies of North Dakota
For its second consecutive year, the Al Larvick Conservation Fund (ALCF), along with its community partners are bringing events back to three North Dakota cities, Bismarck, Valley City and West Fargo. Read more here...
2015
alcf north dakota home movie tour
Exploring Home Movies: The Window into Personal Legacy & Cultural Heritage
The Al Larvick Conservation Fund and its partners are bringing three screening events to three cities in North Dakota this September. The events will consist of a screening of select home movies, which were locally recorded, accompanied by discussion with a local historian and archivist, and a home movie preservation expert. The screening and discussion will encourage audience participation. An “Exploring Your Home Movies” workshop will follow. The workshop offers instruction for home care and the professional transfer process from analog to contemporary mediums, as well as explore how home movies bring valuable insights into one’s own heritage, their broader importance and ways to share these materials with family and community. Read more here...
