Home Movie Event Reaches Westborough Library Marquee

Home movies often feature family adventures that didn't follow the script.

A program at the Monday night will introduce community members to a process that, in the end, gives home movies more direction.

Westborough resident Hanan Daqqa presents "Not Another Home Movie" at 7 p.m.

The audience will screen three short films made by Westborough parents about their families: "Super Jackson", "A Summery Morning" and "Magical Owen." The audience then will hear about how the home movies were made.

Daqqa said the program is part of her graduate work at Emerson College, where she recently earned a master's degree.

She says she hopes Monday night's audience "will be excited about being enabled and empowered to make their own films," but "more of a film that has artistic value, entertainment value."

Daqqa says she worked with Westborough TV and Westborough families on the project. She has invited the families to Monday night's program.

Executive Director Donna Kelly says that people making home movies often "don't plan it, it's just a recording."

"What Hanan has done is opened it up and raised it to a new genre of filmmaking," Kelly says.

Daqqa says she has "always (been) interested in media" and in learning about "communicating with human values and ideas."

However, she initially worked in science, earning a chemical engineering degree.

Eventually, "I fulfilled my need inside" in science, and worked five years in TV and radio in the Middle East, including as a TV host, she says.

She then came to the United States and raised a family, before returning to school.

Daqqa says this particular graduate project required her to "public screen a film, either at Emerson or in the community."

"I thought it would be wonderful to have it screened in the community, in the public library. I just thought of the public library right away," she says.

Kelly agrees with Daqqa's location choice.

"I think our town library is really working quite hard to become more of a media center. So, it's books in all their different forms. And movies. And video," Kelly says.

"So, it seemed like that was a good match. They're looking for people who are communicating with others in new ways."

chemical engineering degree.