Archival encounters: Institutional critique in contemporary found footage films

Abstract

Reuses of archival film continue to proliferate in filmmaking prac-tices across the United States, concurrent with the opening up of film collections for expanded use and activation. Building upon past scholarship on appropriation and found footage filmmaking, this ar-ticle argues that appropriation films are uniquely positioned to fore-ground the material conditions of ownership and the histories of en-closure and extraction that shape the film archival world. It proposes the metaphor of an ‘archival encounter’ between a filmmaker and a specific film collection, which becomes the subject of an institutional critique. Two films are discussed as examples that stake out political and ethical positions regarding the material they use and make de-mands of archival collections: Expedition Content (2020) demon-strates the embedded racism of ‘objective’ ethnographic film materi-al through textual interventions and aural parapraxes; Riotsville, USA (2022) follows a painstaking research-based route to contextualise a visual narrative of American racism that white audiences are eager to misremember. Rather than perfect models to imitate, these films ex-emplify the strengths and limitations of filmmakers as agents in the push to democratise film archives. They also add nuance to contem-porary discussions of appropriation films that mostly focus on the changes wrought by digital technology.