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The found footage film is a specific subgenre of experimental (or avant-garde) cinema that integrates previously shot film material into new productions. 1 The etymology of the phrase suggests its devotion to uncovering "hidden meanings" in film material. "Footage" is an already archaic British imperial (and now American imperial) measure of film length, evoking a bulk of industrial product—waste, junk—within which treasures can be "found." Found footage is different from archival footage: the archive is an official institution that separates historical record from the outtake; 2 much of the material used in experimental found footage films is not archived but from private collections, commercial stock shot agencies, junk stores, and garbage bins, or has literally been found in the street. Found footage filmmakers play at the margins, whether with the obscurity of the ephemeral 3 footage itself End Page 41 (filmmaker Nathanial Dorsky likes to call it "lost" footage) 4 or with the countercultural meanings excavated 5 from culturally iconic footage. Found footage filmmaking is a metahistorical form commenting on the cultural discourses and narrative patterns behind history. Whether picking through the detritus of the mass mediascape or refinding (through image processing and optical printing) the new in the familiar, the found footage artist critically investigates the history behind the image, discursively embedded within its history of production, circulation, and consumption.
Michael Zryd (Wed,) studied this question.