Film lovers headed to the East Village on Saturday for the Fourth Annual Home Movie Day. “We want to see those movies!” announced a flier that welcomed all movies, whether it was Grandpa in his Cadillac, a cousin’s graduation, or the day you lost your first tooth.

A co-founder of Home Movie Day, Kate Trainor, introduced the program by saying the organization was founded four years ago when it was discovered that people were throwing away their film after transferring their home movies to DVD or VHS.

Home Movie Day, she said, was set up to help educate people about how to preserve the original films and where they might deposit them. It’s “education clouded in entertainment.” (Someone in the audience replied, “All education is clouded.”)

Anthology Film Archives film archivist Andrew Lampert stood at the projector as various audience members introduced their films. Thomas Stachelrodt, who runs a construction company in Ridgewood, N.J., brought a 1970s student movie that he appeared in. His then girlfriend Jane Warrenbrand had made the firm, which was about a woman getting mugged. “I haven’t put on a pound since then,”he told the audience. He was seated next to his wife Paula de Stefano, who heads the preservation department at New York University Libraries. She said next year she might show her grandfather’s home movie footage of the Hindenburg disaster in Lakehurst, N.J., in 1937.

The co-founder and chief organizer of the Orphan Film Symposium, Dan Streible, told The New York Sun why home movies were important.First, they were family heirlooms and artifacts that might be the most direct, pre-video attachment one has to relatives, friends, and places. Also, from a broader perspective, he said, viewing an individual home movie 50 years later represented a document of a place and time that is often not captured in other types of film.

Chicago resident Nick Osborn said another reason they were important was because they show “what people thought was important in their own life.”

“The reason that there’s something to be learned by gathering annually to watch other people’s home movies,” Mr. Streible said, is “because of the surprises that show up in these films.” He said in addition to seeing predictable and boring stuff, there is material that defies convention. He gave the example of one home movie he was watching that turned out to be Hank Aaron’s major league debut in spring training.

The Knickerbocker asked Mr. Streible about the history of home movies in a nutshell. In 1912, Thomas Edison sold home movie technology and some well-to-do Americans took advantage of it.In 1923 Kodak sold 16 mm film as a consumer product. In the early 1930s, the less-expensive 8 mm film was introduced. In the 1960s, so-called “Super 8” film became popular for its better quality.

Many audience members competed for prizes by playing Home Movie Day Bingo, checking off such choices as “Jumping in the Ocean,” “Graduation,” and “Riding Bicycle.”

Audience member Stephanie Gray introduced her film about her experience right after completing her taxes; another attendee described the film he took of a backyard tour of his brother’s house a decade ago in suburban New Jersey. His brother had disliked his neighbors and so he built a fence.

Mr. Osborn introduced a film from the 1960s that he had bought on eBay. He said the seller had asked him to please tell him what was on the film. When he later informed the seller that the film was of gay men vacationing in Mexico, he received a terse e-mail asking him not to contact the seller again.

Other film scenes that afternoon were of a cat being petted; a dog being washed; a baby in a crib watching an overhead moving mobile; footage (some underexposed) of a recent wedding near Buffalo, N.Y.; film of Central Park that had been found in a projector being thrown out; and scenes of Nantucket.All the while, Mr. Lampert interjected various observations and comments, such as, “Tricycles are a very popular subject” in home movies.

Some of the most moving footage was taken Moorestown, N.J., in August 1961. Horticulturalist and artist Nancy Buivid introduced a film of herself as a young girl wearing goggles and red pants as her father took her for a spin on his BMW motorcycle.

She spoke of first having watched the film and the emotional impact just to see her father’s image moving again after being still in her mind for decades.

Home movies allow strangers an intimate peek into private family moments. Earlier in the program, Mr. Lampert said, “I always say, Home Movie Day isn’t real if somebody doesn’t cry.”

gshapiro@nysun.com