Academic literature on the topic 'Found footage film'

The focus of this article will be on the artistic practice of found footage film-making—with which is understood the practice of creating new films with extant material—and the ‘aesthetics of access’. Lucas Hilderbrand introduces this term in his 2009 publication Inherent Vice, in which he assembles issues of copyright, preservation and bootlegging and applies it to the specific case study of VHS. When he speaks of aesthetics of access he does so in reference to the formal characteristics of the image. That is how the term is intended here as well. So for instance, film-maker Matthias Müller shot the footage he has used to compile his found footage film Home Stories (1990) with a 16 mm film camera off a television screen. Whether this mode of production was favoured for its specific visual impact or for circumventing having to obtain permission to re-use the (mainly Hollywood feature) film material, the resulting slightly degraded look of the duplicated material is a direct result of how the material was accessed, hence its ‘aesthetics of access’. This article argues that the legal provenance of archival material, and potential ways of circumventing legal restrictions in obtaining that material, can be traced in the ultimate form of found footage films. It also argues that in their new amalgamated states, the films emphasise such concepts as ownership and authorship and that they can be seen as illustrative in their allusions to the ways that institutional context, copyright and film form are interdependent.

This article proposes a reconceptualization of the term “actor” within motion pictures and presents the argument that “acting” is a matter of distributed agency performed by heterogeneous assemblages. What constitutes an actor is what I will label as a “cinematic actor assemblage,” a term that comprises what is commonly known as human actors as well as material entities that play an active part in motion picture images. The use of intra-diegetic cameras in contemporary found footage horror films constitutes a particular case of such cinematic actor assemblages. Through a dynamic relational performance, cameras here take on roles as active agents with the potential to affect other elements within the images as well as the films’ audiences. In found footage horror the assemblage mode of operation creates suspense, since the vulnerability of the camera threatens the viewer's access to the depicted events. While human characters and individual entities making up the camera assemblage are disposable, the recording is not. Found footage horror crucially hinges upon the survival of the footage. I will further suggest that these films allow filmmakers to experiment with the acting capabilities of intra-diegetic cameras.

Many experimental found footage films base their meanings and effects on an interaction between the figurative content of the image and its material-technological underpinnings. Can this interaction arise accidentally without artistic appropriation? A recently digitised film by the Czech cinema pioneer Jan Kříženecký, Opening Ceremony of the Čech Bridge (1908), presents such an exercise in accidental aesthetics. At one point, the horizontal and vertical trembling of the cinematograph – obtained from the Lumière brothers – translates into a trembling of the figures on the bridge so precisely that the figurative and material spheres appear to cooperate towards a common aesthetic goal. To account for such phenomena, film theory, found footage filmmaking, and archival practice need to join forces with philosophy. More specifically, Gilbert Simondon's notion of transduction, a process based on the intersection of diverse realities within a domain, allows us to conceptualise the paradoxical interaction between the figurative and material dimensions and the unintentional meanings that arise out of it. Transduction enables the distribution of elements between these heterogeneous spheres while maintaining a certain stability within a system. In the case of archival films in which transduction occurs without prior intention or expectation, transduction can be foregrounded and prolonged. The connection between transduction and the “trembling meaning” of Opening Ceremony, understood within the wider context of camera instability in experimental found footage, will uncover the aesthetic potentialities held by the autonomous creativity of film matter and its interferences with the figurative content.

An authenticator of the story and a well-tested enhancer of immersion, the trope of the found manuscript has been a persistent presence in Gothic writing since the birth of the genre. The narrative frame offered by purported textual artifacts has always aligned well with the genre’s preoccupation with questions of literary integrity, veracity, authorial originality, ontological anxiety and agency. However, for some time now the application of the found manuscript convention to Gothic fiction has been reduced to a mere token of the genre, failing to gain impact or credibility. A revival of the convention appears to have taken place with the remediation and appropriation of the principally literary trope by the language of film, more specifically, the found footage horror subgenre.
 The article wishes to survey the common modes and purposes of the found manuscript device (by referring mostly to works of classical Gothic literature, such as The Castle of Otranto, Dracula and Frankenstein) to further utilize Dirk Delabastita’s theories on intersemiotic translation and investigate the gains and losses coming with transfiguring the device into the visual form. Found footage horrors have remained both exceptionally popular with audiences and successful at prolonging the convention by inventing a number of strategies related to performing authenticity. The three films considered for analysis, The Blair Witch Project (1999), Paranormal Activity (2007) and REC (2007), exhibit clear literary provenance, yet they also enhance purporting credibility respectively by rendering visual rawness, appealing to voyeuristic tastes, and exploiting susceptibility to conspiratorial thinking.

Abstract Along Laura U. Marks’s thoughts on the “disappearing image” as embodied experience, the article proposes to bring into discussion particular modes of occurrence of “past images,” whether in form of the use of archival/found footage or of creating visual archaisms in the spirit of archival recordings, within the practice of the Hungarian experimental film making of the 1970s and 1980s, more speciflcally, in Gábor Bódy’s films. The return to archival/found footage as well as the production of visual archaisms reveal an attempt of remediation (Bolter and Grusin) that goes beyond the cultural responsibility of preservation: it confronts the film medium with its materiality, historicity, and temporality, and creates productive tensions between the private and the historical, between the pre-cinematic and the texture of motion pictures, between the documentary value of the image and its rhetorical dimension. The paper argues that the authenticity of the moving image in Gábor Bódy’s American Torso (Amerikai anzix, 1975) is achieved through a special combination of the immediacy and the hypermediacy of experience. Bódy’s interest in “past images” goes beyond the intention of experimentation with the medium; it is aimed at a profound, reconsidered archaeology of the image and a distinct sensing of the cinema.

The aim of this article is to explore how the differences between Guy Debord and Gilles Deleuze delineate two different interpretations of the politics of found footage cinema. To do so, the notion of cinematic interval is crucial. While Debord's practice of détournement presupposes a Hegelian-inspired notion of interval that allows for self-awareness to be achieved, Deleuze puts forth a Bergsonian concept of interval that functions as a condition of possibility for creating an ‘image of movement in itself’. To explore these two interpretations, this article uses Guy Debord's 1973 film The Society of the Spectacle as a case study. By focusing on this specific object, the two interpretations of the cinematic interval make it possible to compare two alternative ways of dealing with the representability – or unrepresentability – of capital, and hence to sketch two alternative views on the politics of found footage film practices.

In 2014, as the number of survivors dwindles, the representation of their memory and testimony after they have gone becomes increasingly important. Although it is critical to discuss the historical facts of the atrocities of World War II, those facts often do not reach the personal experiences of many survivors, who can only express many of the details of their experiences through an expression of their memories through testimony. One such testimony is that of Wanda Bielecka, a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. This practice-based research (consisting of a film and accompanying thesis) explores her memories as they are expressed through her own testimony, and the testimony of her testimony of eleven members of her family. The practice element of the PhD consists of a 73-minute film called Wanda. Wanda is a found footage narrative, a new form of film developed to answer the following research question: how is survivor experience represented in the collective memory of a survivor’s family, and how can the form of the found footage narrative be used as a way of understanding the construction of that memory? This research will explore the collective memory of the Bielecka family around the events of Wanda’s life during World War II from her incarceration in Auschwitz to her eventual liberation and journey to Paris. This collective memory will be explored as a mythology around Wanda’s experience. The film itself will then reflexively reveal its’ own place in the construction of that mythology. A formal conception of the dialectical image is fundamental to the film’s form. This form has been developed through research into essayistic modes in literature and film. It will be shown that the found footage narrative is a form of film that can be used to research, not just the collective memory around Wanda’s experience, but also other instances of collective memory.

Este trabalho analisa os usos do material de arquivo, as construções discursivas e a visão historiográfica deles decorrentes em dois filmes dedicados a personagens da música popular brasileira, em particular do samba: o curta-metragem A voz e o vazio: A vez de Vassourinha (1998), de Carlos Adriano, e o longa-metragem Cartola, música para os olhos (2006), de Lírio Ferreira e Hilton Lacerda. Os dois filmes estão construídos a partir de uma perspectiva da estética found footage, com o material de arquivo operando como base indicial para novos arranjos de sentido na interpretação da história. A análise busca identificar os nexos criados pelas duas obras e a variada gama de diálogos culturais que podem ser inferidos de sua leitura. Em destaque, o lugar que a música popular ocupa na cultura urbana brasileira. Ao fazê-lo, o trabalho identifica matrizes estéticas comuns, como o cinema de invenção de Julio Bressane, mas que resultam em diferentes abordagens historiográficas: uma, signatária de uma visão pós-moderna; a outra, mais próxima a uma atualização da crônica histórica.<br>This dissertation analyses the use of archive material, the discursive constructions and the resulting historiographic vision in two films dedicated to personalities from Brazilian Popular Music, particularly from samba: the short film The voice and the void: Vassourinhas turn (1998), by Carlos Adriano, and the feature film Cartola, music for the eyes (2006), by Lírio Ferreira and Hilton Lacerda. Both films were assembled from the perspective of found footage aesthetic, in which the archive material indicates new arrangements of meaning for the interpretation of the story.The analysis aims to identify the nexuses created by the two works and the varied range of cultural dialogues that may be inferred from their interpretation. Special attention is given to the place of popular music in Brazilian urban culture. As a result, common aesthetic matrixes are identified, such as Julio Bressanes cinema of invention, resulting, however, in different historiographic approaches: one, signatory of a post-modern vision; the other, more similar to an update of historic chronicles.

Based on the premise that only in being accessible can the film reach its potential for history making, the contribution of the film archive to a particular film historical narrative is fragmented: the films that are extant are not necessarily available and the ones that are available are not necessarily publicly accessible. The contention of the thesis is that ‘doing’ film history in the context of the film archive should always be seen in light of an ever increasingly narrowing fragmentation of accessible material that takes place in the film archive. What is new about the contribution of this thesis is not that the film archive can be seen simultaneously as a result of a particular historical narrative as well as contributing to one, but that this debate is put in the context of copyright as a determining factor of why the accessible part of the film archive is only a partial picture. To this end, the thesis proposes a reorganisation of existing categories of analysis in the form of a cross-section of the film archive based on copyright ownership plotted against the material’s ‘availability’. By such practices as using a risk-managed approach to copyright clearance for archival digitisation projects, the film archive can be seen to act as a mediator between copyright and film historiography. On the one hand, the film archive is subjected to copyright law, against the constraints of which it can be seen to resist. On the other hand, the archive makes productive use of copyright in its involvement in the interplay between the ownership of the physical objects and the ability to control the subsequent use and dissemination of those objects. Some of these resistant and productive practices, such as found footage filmmaking as a historiographic intervention and providing access to public domain material, are analysed in the context of some of the digital access practices of EYE Film Institute Netherlands between 2002-2005, in which the film archive can be seen to actively shape access to its film archival holdings as well as a particular potential for film history writing.

A pesquisa tem por objetivo evidenciar de que maneira a criação artística baseada exclusivamente em apropriação e montagem de registros pré-existentes de imagem e som pode ser considerada, simultaneamente, uma forma expressiva autônoma e um instrumento de crítica cultural, bem como a ocorrência dessa prática na produção audiovisual brasileira. Trata-se de uma investigação histórica, teórica e crítica dos conceitos e práticas de found footage e remix e sua presença no Brasil, que os apresenta legitimados enquanto proposta estética e dimensionados na amplitude de suas manifestações. Toma como fundamentação teórica da investigação as contribuições de Jay Leyda e de William C. Wees ao estudo dos filmes de compilação e de found footage e também teorizações mais amplas a respeito do remix como categoria da produção cultural e forma de expressão artística contemporâneas, tais como as realizadas por Lawrence Lessig e Eduardo Navas. Preliminarmente, a dissertação apresenta um levantamento dos antecedentes históricos da técnica e de suas inúmeras aplicações nos mais diversos gêneros e formatos da produção audiovisual, na qual é particularizada em termos de autores e obras em que se faz presente, com especial atenção ao cinema brasileiro. Segue-se um ensaio sobre seu uso como forma de mediação crítica da produção audiovisual no contexto sociocultural e patamar tecnológico atuais. Afinal, acaba reconhecendo como manifestações de pura metacrítica audiovisual no Brasil duas obras em que essa característica é proeminente e determinante na enunciação do discurso: São Paulo, sinfonia e cacofonia, de Jean-Claude Bernardet (1995) e Um dia na vida, de Eduardo Coutinho (2010). Esses dois exemplos da cinematografia brasileira são então descritos e comentados de maneira que revela como exploram as possibilidades narrativas, poéticas e metacríticas da montagem de material audiovisual alheio.<br>The research aims to show how the artistic creation based solely on appropriation and montage of pre-existing images and sounds can be considered both an autonomous form of expression and an instrument of cultural criticism, as well as the occurrence of this practice the Brazilian audiovisual production. It is a historical, theoretical and critical investigation on found footage and remix and its presence in Brazil, in which such concepts and practices are legitimized as aesthetic proposal and measured in terms of range of their manifestations. The research takes its theoretical guidelines from the contributions of Jay Leyda and William C. Wees to the study of compilation films and found footage and also from broader theories about remix as a contemporary category of cultural production and form of artistic expression, such as those conducted by Lawrence Lessig and Eduardo Navas. Preliminarily, the paper presents a survey of the historical background and numerous applications of the technique in the most diverse genres and formats of audiovisual production, particularized in terms of authors and works that make use of it, with special attention to its presence in Brazilian cinema. Such exposition is followed by an essay on its use as a form of critical mediation of audiovisual production in the present social and cultural context and current technological level. Two Brazilian films are presented as manifestations of pure audiovisual metacriticism in which this characteristic is prominent and featured fundamentally and decisively in their discourse: São Paulo, sinfonia e cacofonia (São Paulo, symphony and cacophony), by Jean-Claude Bernardet (1995) and Um dia na vida (A day in the life), by Eduardo Coutinho (2010). These two examples pulled from Brazilian cinematography are then described and discussed in a way that reveals how they explore the narrative, poetic and metacritical possibilities of found footage montage.

Le projet de doctorat dès arts Le cinéaste comme archiviste explore à l’aide de matériel d’archives existant le lien entre les représentations objective et artistique de l’histoire. Cette recherche s’appuie sur la collection de films d’archives consacrés à Bruxelles conservée à la Cinémathèque royale de Belgique (Cinematek). J’ai utilisé ce matériel d’archives de diverses manières au cours de ma recherche artistique.Un premier défi a consisté à établir, pour le DVD Bruxelles, ville en images, une sélection de films d’archives parmi la collection de la Cinematek consacrée à Bruxelles. Une sélection qui illustre le passé de Bruxelles, dans une perspective historique et esthétique. En tant que scénariste duDVD, j’ai joué le rôle d’archiviste, restant en ce sens fidèle au matériel original, d’un point de vue tant historique qu’esthétique.Au double titre de chercheur et réalisateur, j’ai entrevu un autre défi: réaliser un film de fiction basé sur ce même matériel d’archives consacré à Bruxelles. Il en est résulté le film en found footage Night has come, conçu comme une mosaïque de souvenirs du protagoniste. Le matérield’archives donne une forme visuelle à ces souvenirs. La façon dont le film matérialise les souvenirs est une métaphore du fonctionnement de la mémoire. Celle du protagoniste n’est pas univoque; ses souvenirs sont en proie à la sélection, à la distorsion, à la fragmentation, à la répétition et à l’oubli.Enfin, un troisième défi résidait dans l’écriture du livre Restitution. Tout en y relatant la vie de Raymond Devaux, le réalisateur d’une série de films familiaux que j’ai utilisés dans le long métrage Night has come, j’y explore le rapport entre fiction historique et histoire dans la représentation des sources historiques. J’explore également le rapport entre fiction et vérité en faisant appel à des sources virtuelles, comme le manuscrit de Raymond Devaux que j’ai moi-même écrit, ou au matériel existant qui prend une nouvelle signification dans un autre contexte, comme Tipping Point, ma série de portraits que Devaux aurait peints.<br>Doctorat en Art et Sciences de l'Art<br>Les œuvres artistiques suivantes appartiennent à cette thèse :- Le Film Night has come (63 min.)- Le livre Restitutie (71 pages)- La série de peintures 'Tipping Point' (14)<br>Cotutelle également réalisée au sein de la ERASMUSHOGESCHOOL BRUSSEL<br>info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T20:23:13Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 4661.pdf: 1097916 bytes, checksum: c482bfce0e9225af830987ef6b3c8cac (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-05-08<br>A conceptual overview about documentaries made from archival footage, named foundfootage films. The main reference for the analysis of cinematographic production for the period prior to the year 1960 is the book Films Beget Films, published in 1964 by the American researcher Jay Leyda. This essay seeks to complement the research of Jay Leyda addressing aspects of the biography and work of American filmmaker Emile De Antonio, pointing out the relevance of your audiovisual production in the field of documentary from the use of archival material. The documentary In The Year of the Pig (1968) and his fragmentary, enigmatic and somewhat didatic historical narrative, are subjected to analysis. The goal of this study is an approximation of the De Antonio`s narrative with the concept of historical allegory in the film, according to Brazilian researcher Xavier, based on the ideas of Walter Benjamin on modernity and the role of allegory in the process of reinterpreting history and culture.<br>Um panorama conceitual sobre filmes documentais realizados a partir de images de arquivo, os chamados found-footage films. A principal referência para análise da produção cinematográfica do período anterior aos anos 1960 é o livro Films Beget Films, publicado em 1964, pelo pesquisador norte-americano Jay Leyda. Esta dissertação procura complementar a pesquisa de Jay Leyda com uma abordagem sobre aspectos da biografia e da obra do cineasta norte-americano Emile De Antonio, evidenciando a relevância de sua produção audiovisual no campo do documentário, a partir da utilização de materiais de arquivo. O documentário In The Year of The Pig (1968) - sua narrativa histórica fragmentária, enigmática e pouco didática - é submetido à análise. O objetivo desta pesquisa é uma aproximação das características narrativas de De Antonio com o conceito de alegoria histórica no cinema, segundo o pesquisador brasileiro Ismail Xavier, com base nas ideias de Walter Benjamin sobre a modernidade e o papel da alegoria dentro do processo de reinterpretação histórica e cultural.

À partir de l’œuvre du cinéaste et artiste hongrois Péter Forgács, la thèse aborde plus généralement la question du remontage de films amateurs dans le documentaire contemporain et examine les enjeux esthétiques, historiques et politiques du remploi des films de famille. Les concepts de déterritorialisation et de reterritorialisation développés par Gilles Deleuze et Félix Guattari nous permettent d’interroger la manière dont la pratique « archéologique » du remontage ouvre les films de famille à de multiples resignifications. Comment traversent-ils des territoires esthétiques, géographiques, institutionnels et politiques, de mémoire, d’histoire et de pensée ? Comment, à travers le temps, les histoires que contiennent ces rouleaux des pellicules substandard sont-elles traversées par l’Histoire ? Comment ces films peuvent-ils, rétrospectivement, subvertir la construction officielle de l’histoire et de la mémoire et renégocier la perception du temps historique ? Quelle métahistoire construisent-ils ?L’analyse de la déterritorialisation et de la reterritorialisation des films de famille par le remploi, nous permet d’interroger la manière dont la pratique du remontage crée un nouveau territoire cinématographique, où la mémoire et l’histoire du passé comme de l’avenir peuvent être creusées dans et par l’image. Ici apparaissent les enjeux poét(h)iques et politiques du remploi<br>Through the work of Hungarian artist and filmmaker Péter Forgács, the thesis addresses the question of the reuse (remontage) of amateur films in contemporary documentary and examines the aesthetic, historical and political implications of the appropriation of home movies. The concepts of deterritorialization and reterritorialization developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari allow us to question how the “archeological” practice of reassembly exposes home movies to multiple significations. How can they traverse aesthetic, geographical, institutional and political territories as well as territories of memory, history and thought? How are the stories contained in these rolls of substandard film traversed by History? How can these films subvert the official construction of history and memory and renegotiate the perception of historical time? What metahistory do they establish?The analysis of deterritorialization and reterritorialization of home movies allows us to question how the practice of reassembly creates a new cinematographic territory, in which memory and history of the past, as of the future, can be mined in and by the image. Thus remontage implicates poet(h)ical and political issues

La recherche interroge la valorisation des archives du Nederlands Filmmuseum [NFM] à partir du travail de compilation du cinéaste Peter Delpeut. Ce corpus de dix films [1989-1999] se situe à cheval entre deux ambitions qui ne sont pas toujours compatibles, entre une volonté d'archiviste de rendre accessible des films muets [1895-1931] parfois de simples fragments, en restituant leur couleur, en créant une sonorisation et une quête artistique, plus personnel et liée à un cinéaste. Convoquant des sources audiovisuelles mais également écrites et orales, il s'agit d'abord de se demander comment le NFM en vient à produire ces compilations afin de mettre en valeur ses collections, de tracer l'histoire de cette cinémathèque et de suivre la trajectoire de Delpeut, en somme de comprendre la rencontre entre cet homme riche d'une expérience de recherche, de critique et de réalisation et une institution en plein bouleversement de sa philosophie dans les années 1990. Le questionnement s'oriente ensuite sur le processus de fabrication lui-même et de la façon dont fonctionnent ces compilations en vue de montrer comment elles sont prises en tension entre le sensoriel et l'analytique, étant au-delà et en deçà d'une stricte valorisation des films muets du NFM. La dernière partie interroge les usages des compilations, la manière dont elles sont liées à la politique de programmation du NFM, comment elles affectent la dynamique de l'institution et du cinéaste, mais aussi comment elles sortent du cadre de la cinémathèque, évaluant à chaque fois les apports et les limites en terme de transmission d'un patrimoine cinématographique.

Debates concerning the veracity, ethics and politics of the documentary form circle endlessly around the function of those who participate in it, and the meaning attributed to their participation. Great significance is attached to the way that documentary filmmakers do or do not participate in the world they seek to represent, just as great significance is attached to those subjects whose participation extends beyond playing the part of eyewitness or expert, such that they become part of the very filmmaking process itself. This Ph.D. explores the interface between documentary practice and participatory culture by looking at how their practices, discursive fields and histories intersect, but also by looking at how participating in one might mean participating in the other. In short, the research is an examination of participatory culture through the lens of documentary practice and documentary criticism. In the process, however, this examination of participatory culture will in turn shed light on documentary thinking, especially the meaning and function of ‘the participant’ in contemporary documentary practice. A number of ways of conceiving of participation in documentary practice are discussed in this research, but one of the ideas that gives purpose to that investigation is the notion that the participant in contemporary documentary practice is someone who belongs to a participatory culture in particular. Not only does this mean that those subjects who play a part in a documentary are already informed by their engagement with a range of everyday media practices before the documentary apparatus arrives, the audience for such films are similarly informed and engaged. This audience have their own expectations about how they should be addressed by media producers in general, a fact that feeds back into their expectations about participatory approaches to documentary practice too. It is the ambition of this research to get closer to understanding the relationship between participants in the audience, in documentary and ancillary media texts, as well as behind the camera, and to think about how these relationships constitute a context for the production and reception of documentary films, but also how this context might provide a model for thinking about participatory culture itself. One way that documentary practice and participatory culture converge in this research is in the kind of participatory documentary that I call the ‘Camera Movie’, a narrow mode of documentary filmmaking that appeals directly to contemporary audiences’ desires for innovation and participation, something that is achieved in this case by giving documentary subjects control of the camera. If there is a certain inevitability about this research having to contend with the notion of the ‘participatory documentary’, the ‘participatory camera’ also emerges strongly in this context, especially as a conduit between producer and consumer. Making up the creative component of this research are two documentaries about the reality television event Band In A Bubble, and participatory media practices more broadly. The single-screen film, Hubbub , gives form to the collective intelligence and polyphonous voice of contemporary audiences who must be addressed and solicited in increasingly innovative ways. One More Like That is a split-screen, DVD-Video with alternate audio channels selected by a user who thereby chooses who listens and who speaks in the ongoing conversation between media producers and media consumers. It should be clear from the description above that my own practice does not extend to highly interactive, multi-authored or web-enabled practices, nor the distributed practices one might associate with social media and online collaboration. Mine is fundamentally a single authored, documentary video practice that seeks to analyse and represent participatory culture on screen, and for this reason the Ph.D. refrains from a sustained discussion of the kinds of collaborative practices listed above. This is not to say that such practices don’t also represent an important intersection of documentary practice and participatory culture, they simply represent a different point of intersection. Being practice-led, this research takes its procedural cues from the nature of the practice itself, and sketches parameters that are most enabling of the idea that the practice sets the terms of its own investigation.

A tese investiga como se estabelece o dispositivo do olhar enquanto experiência estética no cinema de horror found footage a partir da materialidade cinematográfica. Realiza-se uma discussão acerca do modo como esses filmes circulam no gênero horror com o cruzamento de teorias de cinema, tecnologia e da Comunicação. A concepção de dispositivo do olhar é pensada, especialmente, a partir de Jonathan Crary, Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, Laurent Mannoni, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Vilém Flusser e Philippe Dubois. O dispositivo do olhar é, portanto, delineado como o comportamento visual e de uso de artefatos tecnológicos que aparece nos filmes e o modo como esse olhar de dentro do filme pode afetar a forma de ver do espectador. Não é como a tecnologia é representada nos filmes, mas a estratégia dessa e seus respectivos discursos em intentar o apelo sensível do público. O problema de pesquisa é: Como se constitui o dispositivo do olhar nos filmes de horror found footage e o que esse fenômeno pode indicar da nossa relação com o cinema e a tecnologia na contemporaneidade? De que modo é possível discutir a experiência estética com o cinema de horror a partir dessas produções? Assim, o objetivo geral da pesquisa é compreender como opera o dispositivo do olhar no cinema de horror found footage e a maneira como ele propõe experiências estéticas, a fim de perceber características da nossa relação com o cinema e a tecnologia na contemporaneidade. Já os objetivos específicos são os seguintes: a) Problematizar o dispositivo do olhar no cinema, sua produção imagética nos respectivos aspectos tecnológicos, sociais e culturais, a partir do horror contemporâneo; b) Estudar aspectos estéticos e narrativos do gênero horror com ênfase nos filmes found footage; c) Discutir especificidades da imagem no found footage; d) Analisar os filmes que compõem o corpus, discutindo-os a partir das movimentações do dispositivo do olhar no horror e das experiências estéticas que potencializam. Entre alguns pressupostos abordados pela tese estão os de que o horror found footage é um fenômeno pós-sala de cinema, ainda que muitas produções circulem em grandes espaços de shopping centers e sejam lançadas em 3D. Ou seja, ver filmes é cada vez mais uma atividade privada e individual. O espectador está sozinho, do mesmo modo que as personagens que correm pela noite escura com uma câmera na mão. A visualidade dos games, a navegação pelas interfaces computacionais ou dispositivos móveis, também deixam marcas nas narrativas com esse estilo. Há ainda diversos tipos de imagens, texturas, cores diferentes que até o desenvolvimento do found footage não haviam sido exploradas no gênero horror. Essas imagens intentam ambiências, conceito de Gumbrecht (2014) que auxiliou a análise. As texturas estranhas, as falhas, ruídos, os “erros” dos equipamentos potencializam as experiências a partir de atmosferas, muitas dessas de aparelhos visuais que não são mais consumidos massivamente, como o VHS. Há sim uma presentificação do passado desses artefatos, dos modos como eram usados, um retorno de hábitos que são reconfigurados pelo contexto do horror. As ambiências possíveis pelas imagens, a perseguição pela experiência tátil com a narrativa, marcam um fenômeno contemporâneo de busca pela apreensão do tempo, das memórias, da vida. Um desejo de possuir as imagens e seus mundos, algo que se sobrepõe à intenção de registro ou de representação do mundo. Podemos afirmar ainda que a ideia de Gumbrecht (2015) do presente amplo se aplica aos filmes estudados nesse aspecto.<br>This thesis investigates the establishment of the apparatus of seeing as an aesthetic experience within found footage horror movies, from their cinematographic materiality. A discussion about the way as these movies circulate in horror genre is made through crossing film, technology and Communication theories. The apparatus of seeing conception is thought, especially, from authors such as Jonathan Crary, Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, Laurent Mannoni, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Vilém Flusser and Philippe Dubois. The apparatus of seeing is, therefore, thought as a behavior, both visual and regarding the usage of technological artifact, that appears within the movies and in the way how this seeing from inside the film can affect the spectator habit of viewing. This is not about the representation of technology, but its strategy and its discourses to propose sensitive appeal in the public. The research problem is: How the apparatus of seeing is composed in found footage horror movies and what can this phenomenon denote about our relation with cinema and technology in contemporaneity? How is it possible to discuss the aesthetic experience with horror movies from these productions? Thus, the main objective is to understand how the apparatus of seeing operates in found footage horror movies and how it proposes aesthetic experiences, in order to see characteristics of our relation with cinema and technology in contemporaneity. The specific objectives are: a) To problematize the apparatus of seeing in cinema, its imagistic production in the respective technological, social and cultural aspects, from contemporary horror genre; b) To study aesthetics and narrative aspects of the horror genre, especially the found footage films; c) To discuss the specificities of the image within found footage; d) To analyze the corpus of films, discussing them from changes of apparatus of seeing and the aesthetic experiences that it potentiates. Among the assumptions the thesis approaches, are that the found footage is a post-cinema phenomenon, although many productions circulate in large spaces of shopping centers and are released in 3D. In other words, watching movies is increasingly a private and individual activity. The spectator is alone, just like the characters that run through the dark night with a camera in their hands. The game visuality, the navigation through computational interfaces or mobile devices, also leave marks in the narratives marked by this style. There are still several types of images, textures, different colors that, until the development of found footage, had not been explored in the horror genre. These images attempt to establish ambiences, a concept of Gumbrecht (2014) that aided the analysis. The strange textures, the flaws, the noises, the "errors" of the equipments potentiate experiences from atmospheres, many of them of visual devices that are no longer massively consumed nowadays, like the VHS. There is rather a presentiment of the past of these artifacts, the ways that they were used, a return of habits that are reconfigured by the context of horror. The possible ambiences of the images, the persecution for a tactile experience with the narrative, mark a contemporary phenomenon of search for the apprehension of the time, the memories, the life. A desire to possess the images and their worlds, something that overlaps the intention of recording or representing the world. We can also affirm that the idea of Gumbrecht (2015) of the broad present applies to the films studied in this aspect.

Performing Moving Images: Access, Archive and Affects presents institutions, individuals and networks who have ensured experimental films and Expanded Cinema of the 1960s and 1970s are not consigned to oblivion. Through a comparison of recent international case studies from festivals, museums, and gallery spaces, the book analyzes their new contexts, and describes the affective reception of those events. The study asks: what is the relationship between an aesthetic experience and memory at the point where film archives, cinema, and exhibition practices intersect? What can we learn from re-screenings, re-enactments, and found footage works, that are using archival material? How does the affective experience of the images, sounds and music resonate today? Performing Moving Images: Access, Archive and Affects proposes a theoretical framework from the perspective of the performative practice of programming, curating, and reconstructing, bringing in insights from original interviews with cultural agents together with an interdisciplinary academic discourse.

Drawing on ideas of the Surrealist automatic and filmic détournement, artists working with found footage are able to construct new meanings and aesthetics by deconstructing completed audiovisual texts. When original music is retained, or replaced by a new sonic collage, the disjointed sonic flow problematises and enhances the collage aesthetic by extending the possibilities for juxtaposition not only in a linear fashion, but also in a vertical, audiovisual direction, a process that highlights the materiality and artifice of the new combination of images. Here, pre-used footage can be collaged in such a way as to bring to the fore the conventions of mainstream cinematography and the languages of mass media. The result is not audiovisual synchronicity, but rather collision, or dissonance. Through the close reading of several found-footage films, this chapter traces the evolution of an activated form of audiovisual consumption that arises from a process of alienated listening.

Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick’s The Blair Witch Project (1999) launched the horror subgenre of “found footage”—pseudodocumentary horror—into the mainstream. The film was marketed as a true story and features the footage of three student filmmakers who got lost on a trip to document the Blair Witch phenomenon. The film was remarkably effective in using simple cinematic techniques to generate an authenticity aesthetic, and in using a suggestive multiplatform advertising campaign, thus capturing audience interest and generating strong emotional responses. The film tapped into evolved defense mechanisms through its depiction of vulnerable youths getting lost in an unknown, hostile natural environment and being hunted by some malignant, apparently supernatural agent. The film’s promise of authenticity, of real horror, made the narrative premise even more salient to audiences.

This book explores music- and sound-image relationships in non-mainstream screen repertoire from the earliest examples of experimental audiovisuality to the most recent forms of expanded and digital technology. It challenges presumptions of visual primacy in experimental cinema and rethinks screen music discourse in light of the aesthetics of non-commercial imperatives. Several themes run through the book, connecting with and significantly enlarging upon current critical discourse surrounding realism and audibility in the fiction film, the role of music in mainstream cinema, and the audiovisual strategies of experimental film. The contributors investigate repertoires and artists from Europe and the United States through the critical lenses of synchronicity and animated sound, interrelations of experimentation in image and sound, audiovisual synchresis and dissonance, experimental soundscape traditions, found-footage film, remediation of pre-existent music and sound, popular and queer sound cultures, and a diversity of radical technological and aesthetic tropes in film media traversing the work of early pioneers such as Walter Ruttmann and Len Lye, through the mid-century innovations of Norman McLaren, Stan Brakhage, Lis Rhodes, Kenneth Anger, Andy Warhol, and studio collectives in Poland, to latter-day experimentalists John Smith and Bill Morrison, as well as the contemporary practices of VJing.

This book is one of the most controversial horror films ever made. Despite not achieving huge success when it was first released, the Italian production found an audience on home video in the 1980s and became a 'must-see' for connoisseurs of extreme cinema. Indeed, Cannibal Holocaust's foremost legacy is in the United Kingdom, where it obtained its reputation as one of the most harrowing and offensive 'video nasties' — a term used to refer to a group of films deemed to be 'obscene' by the Department of Public Prosecutions. However, as the years have progressed, Cannibal Holocaust has been re-evaluated, mainly as the forefather of the 'found footage' film, and recent home video re-releases have added some valuable perspective to the onscreen violence with extensive cast and crew interviews. What is missing from this contemporary activity is contextualization of Cannibal Holocaust's style, affirmation and discussion of its locations and any extensive discourse about its representation of third world inhabitants (i.e. as 'primitives'). In addition, and also amiss from previous dialogue on the production, is that Cannibal Holocaust can be seen as one of the key post-Vietnam films. It is the spectre of war — and an explicit warning about Western involvement in civil conflict — which progresses Deodato's story of jungle adventurers in peril. By approaching the film from a more formalist position, this book provides an insightful discussion of this groundbreaking film.

Few films have had the influence and impact of The Blair Witch Project (1999). Its arrival was a horror cinema palette cleanser after a decade of serial killers and postmodern intertextuality, a bare bones ‘found footage’ trendsetter. The Blair Witch Project was the tenth biggest box office earner of 1999. Even with strong competition in the horror genre, the film managed to stand out from the rest. It was arguably a product of its time more than any other film of the 1990s, heralding the advent of digital filmmaking. Backed up by an internet marketing campaign, The Blair Witch Project became a glowing example of what could be achieved with cheap emerging technology, imagination, and a ‘less is more’ approach. By the year 2000, and due to the influx of digital video cameras, there were far more independent features being made than ever before. This book explores the aesthetics of The Blair Witch Project, how identification is encouraged in the film, and the way it successfully creates fear in contemporary audiences. The book tells the story of the film from his conception and production, and then provides a unique analysis of the techniques used, their appeal to audiences and the themes that helped make the film such an international hit, including the pioneering internet marketing.

Abstract This chapter investigates different ways in which the film techniques of digitally mediated images—such as found footage, diegetic camera, and computer screen—achieve story truthfulness and affective engagement in the viewer’s narrative interpretation process. The pursuit of truthful storytelling is to demonstrate objective facts, while mediated images in film are predominantly subjective. The chapter starts by reviewing the perennial paradox of two seemingly mutually exclusive narrative functions and then tackles the paradox by proposing a multi-leveled framework, synthesizing semiotic conceptualization and cognitive research findings. It also analyzes the various forms of digital mediated images in films over the last two decades and sheds light on how the functions of truthfulness and affective engagement can be closely intertwined rather than in conflict.

This chapter focuses on the recruitment of the audience into the “military metaphysics” that C. Wright Mills decries as a symptom of America's Cold War mentality. More specifically, it reads attempts at recruitment made by science fiction films of the period through the use of military stock footage. Pilfering the public domain for footage to be inserted into one's own film was a standard device of inexpensive filmmaking that found one of its most extreme expressions in Alfred E. Green's Invasion U.S.A. (1952). Generally dismissed as a hack job and mercilessly lampooned by Mystery Science Theater 3000, Invasion U.S.A. is a prime example of a politically engaged film using one of the common stylistic devices of 1950s low-budget filmmaking.