Dramatic, funny, poignant and even strange, Amateur Night presents 16 amateur films from the collections of American film archives. Piecing together family moments, historical scenes, animation, drama, comic routines and travelogues dating from 1915 to 2005, this groundbreaking compilation demonstrates the eclectic array of entertainment, innovation and enlightenment found in home movies. Featuring films by average Joes alongside notables like Alfred Hitchcock, Richard Nixon, animator Helen Hill and Smokey Bear, Amateur Night adds to the images archival audio, commentaries from family members, as well as newly-recorded music. Blown-up from the original reels to 35mm, Amateur Night is a feature length big screen journey into the eclectic past of small-gauge filmmaking.

FULL SYNOPSIS

What do you think of when you think of home movies? Whatever the answer, chances are that it is mostly correct, but also incomplete. Amateur Night, a compilation of 16 home movies and amateur films culled from the collections of film archives is a journey into the eclectic past of home-based filmmaking. While countless filmmakers have incorporated home movies into their own films, this is likely the first feature-length film made up entirely of unedited amateur films, foregrounding them not as illustrative footage, but as complete works to be viewed on their own terms.

A mixture of excerpts and complete reels, the films are allowed to stand on their own with their occasional mistakes intact. The films come from a variety of sources, including 8mm, super 8, 16mm and the rarer 9.5mm and 28mm formats. Three films come with their original soundtracks (all narrations recorded by the filmmakers), while the remaining films have been supplemented with new tracks, including archival sound and music and newly-composed musical scores by 4 Five VI, an ensemble that specializes in innovative silent film accompaniment, and Rachel Grimes, formerly of the Louisville, Kentucky band Rachel’s. Five of the films include commentaries recorded specifically for the film by relatives of the late filmmakers, such as Patricia Hitchcock O’Connell, who shares memories of her father Alfred Hitchcock.

Family life has long been at the heart of home moviemaking, and it is represented here in many forms, including the Hashizume family in the Heart Mountain internment camp in Wyoming during the Second World War; the multiethnic life of Mort Goldman, a New Jersey chicken farmer; a comedic sketch by the Minnich family of Knoxville, Tennessee, and Alfred Hitchcock cavorting with family and friends at his country home in England.

Amateur filmmakers also covered historical events in their uniquely personal ways, such as an atomic bomb test in the Nevada desert, filmed by a Georgia newspaper man; footage of Richard Nixon’s visit to Idaho Falls in 1971, filmed with a degree of intimacy that only his staff members (armed with a super 8 camera as they looked over his shoulder) could manage; the Last Great Gathering of the Sioux Nation, filmed in Nebraska in 1934; and the late filmmaker Helen Hill’s portrait of her beloved New Orleans, shot during her return following Hurricane Katrina.

Amateur Night includes not just raw home movies, but also examples from some of America’s most talented amateur filmmakers, including the National Film Registry title Our Day, a finely crafted portrait of life in small town Kentucky; Fairy Princess, a charming movie by award-winning Chicago filmmaker Margaret Conneelly, combining live-action sequences and pixilated animations; and Welcome San Francisco Movie Makers, a portrait of a filmmaking club from 1960.