Lost Film Found Film

Lost Film Found Film

In an age where the historical event is mediated increasingly through

the still and moving image, new stress is placed on the archival image as surviving evidence of and performer of history. Lost Film Found Film asks what the scope is for re-intervention by artists who engage with the documentary archival. What is found in their reappropriation? What is lost in the remix?

Through a discussion of key works by Jean-Luc Godard, Hito Steyerl,

Harun Farocki, Jayce Salloum, Johan Grimonprez and Eyal Sivan,

Lost Film Found Film offers a definition and a description of what I

have called the Cinema of Aftermath. I define this as cinema that

evolved in the aftermath of the Second World War, that deploys found

footage film not only as a form of critique but also as a form of

participation in wider historical and political events.

I argue that the Cinema of Aftermath comments on politics and is also

political. Central to its project is a questioning of the potency of the

archival image in both its self-reflexive and wider cultural use.

In three chapters, I explore how the Cinema of Aftermath recalibrates

the meaning and renews the formal possibilities of the documentary,

and analyse the performance of memory, truth and evidence by this

aestheticisation of archival image.