Home Movies

For many years the idea of building a VCR with dual-cassette capability was controversial. Such a machine would make copying a tape extremely simple - too simple, in the eyes of the motion-picture industry, which feared widespread piracy. Now at least one company, Go Video, makes a two-in-one VHS unit, and the rampant copying of cassettes at home has not materialized. Perhaps copies are not so desirable now that top-drawer movies can be bought for less than $20. But now there's a double-cassette VCR with a better wrinkle.

GOT A PILE of home movies sitting in a shoe box that you haven't combed through in years? Get motivated this week and the Philadelphia Film Archivists Collective could make your day - and your family into "stars" - at their Home Movie Day screening on Saturday. A spin-off of the Secret Cinema screening series, the Archivists Collective and Home Movie Day abide by the same "if it's not shot on film stock, it's $h*#" code of aesthetic purity. That's to say, they're not interested in showing anything you might have recorded in the home videotape era, which won consumers' hearts from the mid-1980s forward and pretty much destroyed the Kodak-dominated 8 mm and Super 8 mm film business.

At this very nanosecond, some of the best films in the city, if not on the planet, are screening in the Loew's Philadelphia Hotel ballroom. There, movies left to decay in basements or put out on the street as trash have been restored, images crisp as this morning's cornflakes. On one screen, mischievous toddler John F. Kennedy Jr. tangles with Secret Service agents in Hyannisport, circa 1962. On another, boxer José "Chequi" Torres kisses his radiant bride, Ramona, at their Brooklyn nuptials in 1961.

Movies in three dimensions long have been dreamed about, but clumsy mechanics and less-than-lifelike visual experience have relegated 3-D to the sideshow of Hollywood gimmickry. Now home video is taking an earnest crack at it. It's no joke. Toshiba has built an actual 3-D home-video camera, which the company promises to have in stores by May. At $2,800, it may not rack up a lot of sales, but it's certain to create a buzz in electronics stores - and that may be the whole idea. It did succeed in attracting crowds of the curious when it was demonstrated to retailers and the press at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month.

Dean H. LeFavor, a beloved family doctor who made house calls in Palmyra in the 1930s, could have been a swell character in a Jimmy Stewart flick. At nearly every jalopy crash and house fire in the borough, LeFavor was the stout, dapper, bespectacled, cigar-smoking fellow, medical bag nearby, tending to the wounded. "Doc," as he was affectionately called, was on the scene when a Model T Ford went into a ditch and had to be pushed back onto the unpaved road by a group of head-scratching men. He was there when a North Carolina plane made an emergency landing in a bumpy field.

A Letter Without Words is a love letter without equal. The 62-minute film, a profoundly moving collaboration between a filmmaker and the grandmother she never knew, launches the 18th season of the Jewish Film Festival at the Gershman Y on Saturday. In 1981, nearly 30 years after the death of her paternal grandmother, Lisa Lewenz discovered a cache of Ella Arnhold Lewenz's home movies made during the 1920s and 1930s. Ordinarily, this would be of little interest to anyone outside the immediate family.

Isaiah Zagar's art is all over Philadelphia's South Street corridor. And his restless spirit - and painful secrets - are all over In a Dream , a stunning, deeply personal documentary portrait by the muralist's youngest son, Jeremiah Zagar. Like the dazzling, colorful mosaics that Isaiah has pasted to buildings around town - crazy-quilt images of people (often the artist himself), shards of shattered mirror, cracked crockery, bottles, bicycle wheels - his life has been kaleidoscopic, yet singularly focused.

Calling all free-jazz fans. And all folks who recognized and understood the social chaos and racial upheaval of the '60s and '70s. And all people who have a keen eye for the low-budget sci-fi and blaxploitation efforts of the same era. And, finally, all lovers of the wild and wonderful world, or should I say universe, of Sun Ra. The 1974 film Space Is the Place returns to us earthlings this week in digital form. Restored to its original 82-minute length, with extras that include some rarely seen home movies, this film is all but guaranteed to put your brain in orbit.

In the time that it takes for yesterday's home movies to become tomorrow's historic footage, film decomposes, erasing images key to our culture. Yesterday, the Pew Charitable Trusts announced a $200,000 grant to preserve works at five federal archives, including informal footage of the Duke Ellington Orchestra at play and of Margaret Mead's fieldwork in Bali. "These are the ur- documents of jazz and anthropology," said Marian A. Godfrey, director of Pew's cultural program.

Everyone has a story. Home Movies, an evening-length piece from Everett Dance Theatre at the Painted Bride Art Center, makes that clear. Through dance, narrative, photographs, music - and, yes, home movies - the company's five cast members deftly tell their often funny, sometimes shocking, life tales. They are entertaining, thought-provoking and fast-moving. Bravell Smith sits behind a scrim lit to look as if he's sitting on the stoop of his childhood home as he talks of how he grew up too fast when his father got sick.

CLEARWATER, Fla. - When Mike Stutes went home to Oregon for Christmas, he realized his parents had recorded every pitch their son threw during his rookie season with the Phillies. "I was bored," Stutes said, so he started watching. Fifteen minutes later, Stutes was no longer bored. "My motion looked completely different toward the end of the season," he said. "So then I really sat there and watched it. " The 25-year-old righthander came to spring training with greater self-awareness in 2012.

GOT A PILE of home movies sitting in a shoe box that you haven't combed through in years? Get motivated this week and the Philadelphia Film Archivists Collective could make your day - and your family into "stars" - at their Home Movie Day screening on Saturday. A spin-off of the Secret Cinema screening series, the Archivists Collective and Home Movie Day abide by the same "if it's not shot on film stock, it's $h*#" code of aesthetic purity. That's to say, they're not interested in showing anything you might have recorded in the home videotape era, which won consumers' hearts from the mid-1980s forward and pretty much destroyed the Kodak-dominated 8 mm and Super 8 mm film business.

At this very nanosecond, some of the best films in the city, if not on the planet, are screening in the Loew's Philadelphia Hotel ballroom. There, movies left to decay in basements or put out on the street as trash have been restored, images crisp as this morning's cornflakes. On one screen, mischievous toddler John F. Kennedy Jr. tangles with Secret Service agents in Hyannisport, circa 1962. On another, boxer José "Chequi" Torres kisses his radiant bride, Ramona, at their Brooklyn nuptials in 1961.

There are Hollywood legends. Then there's Paul Newman. With more than 80 film and TV roles to his credit, Newman, who died in September 2008 at 83, starred in some of Hollywood's most enduring productions. The consummate leading man, family man, racing man, and man's man, Newman also was a celebrated philanthropist whose Newman's Own food line supported numerous charities. The actor's career is celebrated in the new 17-disc DVD set, Paul Newman: The Tribute Collection, from Fox (www.

This month's filmfest explosion continues apace with a major Philly fest and two video events off the beaten path. The Found Footage Festival, tonight at 7:30 at the Latvian Society Hall (531 N. Seventh St., in Center City), is a combination film screening/sketch comedy act featuring New York-based humorists Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher, whose credits include Comedy Central's The Colbert Report and The Onion. Now in its fourth year, FFF is a national touring showcase of silly and outrageous videos found at flea markets and garage sales across America.

The Eagles brought their Long Road Out of Eden tour to the Wachovia Center on Monday night. The experience was like being invited over to a couple's house to enjoy a beloved old movie that you never get tired of watching. But first, your hosts insist that you sit through home movies of their recent cruise ship vacation. Before the venerable pop group got to its greatest hits - the expectation of which had packed the building to the rafters - the boys insisted on playing extended selections from their turgid 2007 double album, Long Road Out of Eden.

The Eagles brought their Long Road Out of Eden tour to the Wachovia Center Monday night. The experience was like being invited over to a couple's house to enjoy a beloved old movie that you never get tired of watching. But first your hosts insist that you sit through home movies of their recent cruise ship vacation. Before the venerable pop group got to its greatest hits - the expectation of which had packed the building to the rafters - the boys insisted on playing extended selections from their turgid 2007 double album, Long Road Out of Eden.

Isaiah Zagar's art is all over Philadelphia's South Street corridor. And his restless spirit - and painful secrets - are all over In a Dream , a stunning, deeply personal documentary portrait by the muralist's youngest son, Jeremiah Zagar. Like the dazzling, colorful mosaics that Isaiah has pasted to buildings around town - crazy-quilt images of people (often the artist himself), shards of shattered mirror, cracked crockery, bottles, bicycle wheels - his life has been kaleidoscopic, yet singularly focused.

Philadelphia's most radiant movie star is Lior Liebling, subject of the poignant and profound documentary Praying With Lior. On its surface, Ilana Trachtman's film is a deceptively simple portrait of how a young man's faith illuminates his family and community. On reflection, it is also a complex account of difference and acceptance, of the emotionally fraught journey from grief into joy. To hear Lior tell it, he has "Up Syndrome. " "April Fool's!" laughs the 13-year-old Mount Airy boy on the brink of becoming bar mitzvah, beaming the 500-watt smile that warms everyone in his orbit.

In a move that could signal new changes in the way Americans watch movies, Philadelphia's Comcast Corp. said it signed a deal to debut independent films on its video-on-demand service on the same day they hit theaters. The deal announced yesterday with IFC Entertainment, known best for such movies as Boys Don't Cry and My Big Fat Greek Wedding, creates an On Demand channel called IFC in Theaters, to launch on March 22. Customers will be able to choose from four or five movies a month, and two will be new each month.