People who put together YouTube videos of all the romantic moments between Kate and Sawyer on "Lost," then set it against “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz may not realize that they’re working in a form of experimental filmmaking with a long and respectable history.
"Found footage" filmmaking emerged and quickly entwined with the American pop art movement of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s and hasalways been an exciting possibility of non-narrative filmmaking. Familiar images are repurposed to form a new meaning—Kate and Sawyer are now representative of a superfan’s inner emptiness—but more often that not, found footage films confront us with litany of images about which we know nothing: industrial training films, educational shorts, nature documentaries. Their origins, their original intentions, their relationship to one another are a mystery. We have to accept these images through the eyes of whoever assembled them for us while the artist, in turn, must draw his statements from the limited materials at hand.
Cinefamily’s Tuesday night program, the alluringly alliterative Founding Fathers of Found Footage Films, celebrates the earliest wave of this format and marks the first in a series called the Cocoa Screenings (named for the comfort of the beverage). Experimental film is often viewed so academically, we forget the fact that, like all good art, we’re supposed to enjoy it. And nothing adds a dash of pleasance to weird, high art like a mug of warm cocoa.
"Founding Fathers of Found Footage" plays at 8 p.m., Feb. 3 at the Silent Movie Theater.
