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A flash of a swanndri crosses the screen. A shaggy-haired youth leans in to kiss his girlfriend while around the pair, friends clink glasses of beer. A thumb is raised at the camera in the timeless gesture signifying all is fine.
The scene could be in any one of dozens of small towns in the country today, but instead, what we are seeing is a glimpse into New Zealand's past - a party from 30 years ago captured on grainy, but colour-saturated film.
Footage like this appears on many of the 35,000 films held in the New Zealand Film Archive.
Amongst news footage, feature films and short films made by New Zealand's famous and not-so-famous, the archive boasts a large collection of home movies, many collected during a seven-year drive in the 1990s.
People throughout the country were asked to dig out old movies lingering in cardboard boxes at the back of cupboards and give them to the archive, where they have been copied and carefully catalogued.
The films offer a unique vision of the private worlds of New Zealanders, says video artist and archivist Kathy Dudding.
Footage of a 1930s bride opening her wedding gifts, children playing in 1950s suburban Hawkes Bay, images of Wellington's Courtenay Place from the 1930s, complete with trams and bowler-hatted pedestrians - all feature in a collection that comprises an intimate look at New Zealand life not easily found in history books.
"Film is not necessarily used as a medium for historic record as much as the written word or even oral history," says archive exhibitions and projects developer Mark Williams.
"Home movies can provide us with a window into the past that doesn't otherwise exist."
The sentiment is echoed by film and history buffs around the globe.
So much so that for the past decade an international home movie day has been observed on the second Saturday in August each year.
This year, the day will be celebrated in locations from Buenos Aires to Toronto, from Berlin to Tokyo.
American directors John Waters and Martin Scorsese have both endorsed the celebrations, by urging people to preserve their home movies and join in the festivities.
"Saving our film heritage should not be limited only to commercially produced films," Scorsese is quoted as saying on the home movie day website.
"Home movies do not just capture the important private moments of our families' lives, but they are historical and cultural documents as well."
In Wellington, the film archive will celebrate the day with a performance, a talk, and a screening of a selection of some of the archive's best footage.
An exhibition by Ms Dudding, called This Is Not a Family Album, is being held to coincide with home movie day, beginning yesterday and running until August 26.
Ms Dudding has been collecting home movies for years - buying reels at garage sales and finding treasure in other people's discarded memories.
Her exhibition, screening on 12 monitors in a darkened room at the archive, features footage taken from Super 8 reels she found in a second-hand store in Rome and lugged around a three-month tour of Europe.
Also amongst her exhibition films are New Zealand images collected by Ms Dudding or given to her by friends.
The archive's database, which is available online, allows people to search by name, by location, or by year.
The archive continues to accept deposits of home movies, and will store them in a secure, climate-controlled environment. It will also, if necessary, do conservation and preservation work and copy footage to a new format.
The film remains the property of the owner.
- NZPA
On the web
www.homemovieday.com
www.filmarchive.org.nz
