Our home page features titles from the NFSA’s Straford Family Collection, in honour of Home Movie Day on 17 October. Home Movie Day is an annual, international celebration of amateur films and filmmaking. The Straford collection is a significant Australian amateur filmmaking archive.

Brothers Frank and John Straford inherited their love of filmmaking – and their Pathé camera – from their father Vivien, who shot family home movies in the 1920s and ’30s. By the 1950s, the brothers had formed an amateur production company (Straford Brothers Films) and were making everything from travelogues to science-fiction dramas and stop-motion animations.

Frank compiled The SBF Story in 2003, a comprehensive history of their filmmaking endeavours. In 2005, some of the Straford films screened at the Melbourne International Film Festival and ACMI.

See the Straford Family Films collection on ASO and other home movies dating back to c1909.

Read more about Home Movie Day.