International Home Movie Day 2025
An event supported by a University of Plymouth Get Involved Award
18 Oct 2025 - 18 Oct 2025
Explore and share hidden stories of lesbian lives in Plymouth and the South West. Bring your home movies, videos, or photos - whether on film, tape, or digital - and learn how to preserve and digitise them. Everyone is welcome: lesbian, lesbian-adjacent, LGBTQ+ community members, and allies. Find out more below!
More info
All welcome. Drop in to the Simmons Learning Room, no need to book.
Are there lesbians in your attic?
Are you a lesbian, lesbian-adjacent, part of the wider LGBTQ+ community, or an ally? Did you have a 'maiden aunt’ or a relative who always lived with her ‘female companion’. Do you have home movies, videos or photographs that tell the sometimes hidden histories of lesbian lives in Plymouth and the southwest? Maybe you go to the annual Croyde caravanning getaway, or you were a member of the Pals walking group, or participated in a CND protest, or played for Plymouth Argyle Women’s team, or went to the legendary lesbian discos of the 1980s to fundraise for the southwest’s LGBT helpline, or went to the Ashbury Craft Centre, or bought ‘zines at In Other Words, or you're a sailor, or you’ve brought your life stories with you from other places? Or maybe you haven't seen yourself and your own experiences represented yet.
Come to The Box for International Home Movie Day to celebrate Plymouth’s lesbian past and present. Bring your film, video and photographs – whether it’s on celluloid, tape or is on your phone or a hard drive. Get tips on how to identify your film gauge or video format, how to digitise your collections and how to care for film and video. If you have home movies that you’ve never seen or haven’t watched since you inherited them or brought them with you to live in your new city, bring them to The Box and share them with others!*
This event is supported by a University of Plymouth Get Involved Award. Ruby Nation and Angela Piccini are researching the histories of lesbian lives in Plymouth. What do the archives hold? What can your own personal collections offer? Is there the potential for a lesbian exhibition in the city drawing on archives and personal collections?
International Home Movie Day was started in 2002 by a group of film archivists concerned about what would happen to all the twentieth-century home movies shot on film and video. As filmmaker John Waters (Polyester, Hairspray) says ‘There’s no such thing as a bad home movie. These mini-underground opuses are revealing, scary, joyous, always flawed, filled with accidental art and shout out from attics and closets all over the world to be seen again. Home Movie Day is an orgy of self-discovery, a chance for family memories to suddenly become show business. If you’ve got one, whip it out and show it now!’