HOME MOVIE / BASEMENT TAPES DAY MONTREAL 2025
Saturday December 6, 2025, 2 – 6 p.m.
followed by Home Movie Day film screening, 6 – 7:30 p.m. @ Cinema Public
Casa d’Italia / Cinema Public, 505 Jean-Talon E.
Free!
It’s time once again for Montreal’s own Home Movie and Basement Tapes Day!
Bring out your old reel to reels or audio cassettes, dig up your old home movies and experts from ARCMTL and the Musée des Ondes Berliner (RCA-Victor Museum) will give advice on how these old formats can be safely played or digitized.
From 2 to 6 pm in the basement of the Casa d’Italia, many different audio and video players and projectors will be on hand, from reel to reel and cassette players, record players, 8 and 16mm film projectors, VHS, hi-8, MiniDV and more.
This year’s edition showcases radio advertisements! Original vintage radio ads from Montreal from the 1960s to 1990s will be digitized on-site, including some from partner radio station CKUT 90.3 FM.
Audio and video recordings will be played all afternoon, featuring home movies showing Montreal neighborhoods from the 20th century.
The day ends with a special projection of home movies at 6 p.m. at Cinema Public in the same building.
The programme includes digitised Montreal home movies, including home movies and footage shot by renowned NFB filmmaker Arthur Lipsett and his friends in the 1970s. More ephemeral films shot in and around Little Italy, Rosemont Petite Patrie and the surrounding areas will also be on the menu.
A unique event in Montreal that is not to be missed!
Home Movie Day Montreal has been held for nearly 15 years by ARCMTL with various partners, and Basement Tapes Day Montreal was created in 2020 by the Musée des Ondes Berliner and ARCMTL, inspired from the 2019 and L.A. As Subject – Los Angeles Archives Bazaar. Due to the temporary closure of the Musée des Ondes, Basement Tapes Day could not be held there this year, and so both events are now combined and will take place at Casa d’Italia – Cinema Public.
Home Movie and Basement Tapes Day Montreal 2025 is a collaboration between ARCMTL, Musée des Ondes Berliner, CKUT Radio McGill, Vidéomédia le Laboratoire CinéMédias de l’Université de Montréal, Cinéma Public and Casa d’Italia.
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ARCMTL is now regularly adding digitized home movies found in Montreal on a Youtube playlist for ephemeral films here. If you have any old film reels, VHS or beta or other video formats that you think may have Montreal-area or Quebec home movies on them and you don’t know how to transfer them or want to donate them, you can contact us by email.
ARCMTL and the Musée des ondes Emile Berliner lauched the first annual edition of Basement Tapes Day in November 2020, a showcase of found sounds and vintage audio formats! View this confinement-era webstreamed event on its Youtube playlist here, with subtitles available in English or French.
