Hey Modernism Week folks! Melissa and Devin here. We run a nonprofit home movie archive in Palm Springs called Deserted Films. We collect, preserve, digitize and show home movies shot in and around Southern California (especially Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley!) We’ve been doing our themed shows at CAMP for a few years and we feel like we’re all friends now. Join us in our “living room.” We’ll have our slippers on. You go grab a drink at the lounge. And come share a little bit of home movie magic.

We love home movies. We share our home with thousands of them! And we have been EXTREMELY busy taking in new ones over the last couple of years. We’d really like to show you some of our favorites.

It’s an all-new, recently acquired, freshly researched, thoughtfully curated home movie extravaganza unbound by time or space! It’s coast-to-coast; it’s overseas. It’s singing and dancing. It’s highly intoxicated. It’s flora, it’s fauna, it’s dangerous stunts. It’s the family dog.

It’s every holiday, it’s every birthday, it’s every milestone. It’s tender. It’s awkward. It’s ephemeral. And it might last forever. It’s often beautiful. Some of it is hilarious. Much of it is regional. It’s midcentury and a smidge beyond. It’s handmade. It’s accidental art. It’s purposeful documentation.

What is it about other people’s home movies? The magic, we think, is that they are moving. Come be moved!

Fresh Palm Springs, Coachella Valley, and SoCal footage!

Works by amateurs and wanna-be filmmakers!

Other weird stuff (and movie-watching snacks!)

We are not a cult or a timeshare. But we would love to talk to you for an hour.