Our event was inspired in part by “It Came from the Drexel North”, a 24 Hour Science Fiction Marathon, held at the Drexel North movie theater in Columbus, Ohio. Equally inspirational was Michael’s extensive laserdisc film collection.

The first Tyra film festival was held in August 1995. After having attended “It Came from the Drexel North”, Michael was chatting about the experience with some friends. (He has never quite recovered from his introduction to the snack phenomenon called the “Twinkie Wiener Sandwich”, thanks Pat.) As many movie-related conversations do, the discussion found its way to the topic of the vast Tyra film collection. At that time, most of the movies were on laserdisc. With hundreds of movies to choose from, our friend Karen suggested that we could easily show movies for 24 hours and have our own home film festival. We liked the idea and immediately started strategizing. About six weeks later, the first movies were underway.

The living room was designated as Cinema 1, and Annette selected the film lineup for that screen. Cinema 2 was in the basement, Michael’s turf. That first year, Cinema 1 selections were mostly in the Comedy and Romance genres, and Cinema 2 had Action and Cult Favorites. The themes developed spontaneously that year. Future events sometimes had intentional themes, and other times were random theme-less suggestions.

Guests were asked to bring candy or their favorite movie snacks to share. Recognizing the danger in allowing a houseful of guests to subsist on only popcorn, candy and caffeinated beverages, a hot dinner was served on Saturday night (baked ziti) as well as a hot breakfast Sunday morning.

At the first film festival, door prizes were offered to any attendee who was present for the entire 24 hours. Later, we changed the door prize drawing to midnight in order to involve more of our attendees. We instituted the grand prize, being a Timeslot for the next year’s film festival. Everyone seems to have an opinion on which movies should be shown, so giving away a timeslot allows one lucky winner to select a film, subject to management approval, of course. Look for our list of past winners and their selections elsewhere on this site.

Over the years, we’ve made many improvements. The timing of the festival was the first thing to change. Late summer, with its heat and long hours of daylight was not an ideal time of year for a movie viewing party. The festival moved a little earlier each year, from August to July to June to April and in 1999 finally settled in February on President’s Day weekend. The film collection has expanded to include DVD, HDDVD and BluRay formats. The projection equipment has been upgraded, and we have found better materials for blocking sunlight in Cinema 1.

Setup and breakdown is nearly a choreographed dance. We appreciate the folks who help with the preparations and final cleanup. The Tyra24.com website was introduced in 2010, thanks to Greg Thielen.