PROVIDENCE -- In the film, Angelo and Shirley Tria are young and impeccably dressed. He's in a tuxedo, and she's in a lacy, white dress. It's their wedding day, in 1973.

As the couple onscreen walk out of the church together, they pause for a kiss.

The two dozen people watching the grainy footage cheer and applaud.

"Oh boy!" the present-day Angelo Tria exclaims as he looks on with Shirley, who he's still married to after 33 years.

Yesterday, at an event hosted by the Rhode Island Historical Society, the Trias saw the footage of their wedding for the first time. Their nephew recorded their nuptials in New Bedford on Super-8mm film, but they never had the right projector to watch it.

So when the couple from North Providence heard that the historical society was organizing a screening of home movies, they jumped at the chance to view their own.

"It brings everything back," Angelo Tria said after watching his younger self hop into a car with his wife on the way to their honeymoon in Niagara Falls. "What a thrill."

The historical society organized the screening as part of Home Movie Day, a national celebration started in 2002 by a group of film archivists who believe that amateur movies shot on 16mm, 8mm or Super-8mm film should be preserved for their historic value. They worry that the delicate films will be lost as they deteriorate with age.

This is the first year that the annual event has been held in Rhode Island. It was open to anyone willing to show their home movies.

"These films can tell us so much that's important about the people and daily life of our state," Bernard P. Fishman, the historical society's executive director, said before the screening in the group's Aldrich House headquarters, on Benevolent Street.

Two dozen people sat under a chandelier inside a high-ceilinged room in the Federal-style house to watch silent films on everything from U.S. fighter planes flying in formation during World War II to a group of Rhode Island Red chickens pecking around on a farm in North Attleboro. In the background during part of the screening, a Peggy Lee LP played on a gramophone.

The oldest film was from 1927 and captured a family visiting the Lincoln Park Zoo, in Chicago, and ice-skating on a frozen pond nearby. The most recent was shot last year by Liz Coffey, the society's film archivist, during her vacation in Spain.

This wasn't America's Funniest Home Videos. There were no pratfalls or stupid pet tricks. The films, screened over several hours, captured ordinary scenes from ordinary lives, but for the people in the audience they were fascinating all the same.

Rob Smith, 40, of Narragansett, brought 8mm films that he'd found in a box in his grandmother's attic after her death. The last time he remembers seeing them was when he was 5 years old.

The films showed weddings, a polo match and family get-togethers from a half-century ago. One clip captured his grandfather as a young man riding a show horse bareback on a farm in Warwick.

"It's extraordinary to see them up there," he said.

Edward Smith, 82, (no relation to Rob Smith) showed movies from his childhood in the 1930s. Most were shot inside his family's home on Quincy Street and around their neighborhood near Providence College.

He offered commentary as scenes of his family flickered on the pull-down screen. In one segment, he, his brother and sister hold up the toys they were given on Christmas Day and clown for the camera.

"Dad always made a big deal out of Christmas," said Smith, who lives with his wife in his old neighborhood in Providence.

He grew a little nostalgic as he watched the recordings, which were rare for that time.

"I haven't seen them in so long," Smith said. "It was a different time back then."

akuffner@projo.com / (401) 277-7457