Home Movie Day arrives in Athens: bring family films to a public screening on Oct. 31

Home Movie Day is a global initiative that celebrates amateur, family and personal films as cultural records. It began in 2002 and encourages people to locate, preserve and share home movies—Super 8 reels, VHS tapes and early digital formats—to reframe everyday life as part of social history.

For the first time the Home Movie Day program will be held in Athens. The local edition is organized by a small volunteer group of film and archival professionals: Anastasia Melia Eleftheriou (curator), Orsalia-Eleni Kassaveti (academic) and Manolis Kranakis (film critic). They chose ΚΕΤ in the Kypseli neighborhood as the venue. ΚΕΤ is an independent artistic space known for experimental projects and programming that addresses historical and social questions.

• Find a home movie you want to share. The organizers ask contributors to select up to 10 minutes of footage.
• Notify the team about the format you hold (Super 8, VHS, or digital). If the material is not digitized, the organizers will check it and advise on projection possibilities.
• Register by sending an email to info@homemovieday.gr by Sept. 30 if you want your film to be included officially in the program. There will also be a participation list and the possibility to register on the day of the event.

Organizers are working with Unmade Films and Giannis Kolozis to evaluate and prepare non-digital materials for projection. If you cannot digitize your footage before submitting, contact the team to arrange a check and discuss projection-capable formats.

Athens has archival gaps in the everyday visual record of the city. The organizers present Home Movie Day as an opportunity to surface overlooked visual material that documents ordinary life: celebrations, trips, schools, neighborhoods and family rituals. Screening these films in public situates personal memory within a civic context and makes fragments of recent urban history visible.

• Email for submissions and questions: info@homemovieday.gr
• Event date: Oct. 31, 2026
• Submission deadline for official inclusion: Sept. 30, 2026
• Venue: ΚΕΤ (Kentro Elegchou Tileoraseon), Kypseli
• Additional information: homemovieday.gr and the Home Movie Day Athens Instagram account

If you have family films gathering dust or old tapes you haven't revisited, this is a scheduled opportunity to have a short segment shown publicly, get technical help for digitization, and join a conversation about how private footage contributes to the city's visual history.