Stories The Cultural Importance of Home Movies
Frames from a home movie in Historic New England’s Phillips Family Film Collection. The films, along with a variety of family papers, came to the organization when it acquired the 1821 Phillips House in Salem, Massachusetts, in 2006. The movies were made from 1925 to the 1940s by James Duncan Phillips (1876-1954) and Stephen Phillips (1907-1971).
by KAREN F. GRACY Associate professor, School of Information, Kent State University
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IRTHDAYS, WEDDINGS, GRADUATIONS, holidays, and vacations. Mobile phones are now the device of choice to record our memories of these events, but for much of the twentieth century many American families relied on
predigital technologies like snapshot photography and home movies to capture such milestones for personal reminiscences and posterity. While home movies are often stereotyped as being primarily family records with little artistic or historical value, this genre has been HistoricNewEngland.org
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