Blurred boundaries: remediation of found footage in experimental autobiographical documentary filmmaking

ABSTRACT

In this article I argue that using past films as found footage has benefited the documentary filmmaker in the production of experimental films. The use of found footage may be easily replicated using digital technology and re-edited into new work and offers opportunities to expand filmic discourse beyond the single text; the continuing expansion of screens, formats and digital technologies affords opportunities for experimentation with diverse screens and screening spaces. Using past films as found footage may also circumvent difficulties in obtaining funding to produce new films or in the purchase of archive material. To amplify my discussion I carry out qualitative analyses of my own film [My Private Life II. 2015. UK. High Ground Films. Directed by Jill Daniels. https://vimeo.com/139077147.] and Chantal Akerman’s found footage films which resonate with my own practice on auto-ethnography and exploration of memory and contested identity.

KEYWORDS:

• Found footage
• experimental documentary films
• autobiography
• memory
• contested identity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Jill Daniels is a Senior Lecturer in Film at the University of East London. Her research explores memory, place and autobiography in experimental documentary film practice. She has been making films since 1989 and has won many international awards for her films. She has published in Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice; Encyclopedia of Documentary Film; Screenworks; and co-edited and contributed to Truth, Dare or Promise: Art and Documentary Revisited’. She recently co-curated and contributed to a programme of films about paternal relationships called ‘Filming the Personal’. Her film My Private Life II was shortlisted for an Innovation Award at the AHRC Film Awards in 2016 and was awarded Best Experimental Film at Ann Arbor FF, USA, in 2017. Many of her films are available at https://vimeo.com/jilldanielsfilms. Her website is www.jilldanielsfilms.com.

Notes

1. See Not Reconciled (2009) and The Border Crossing (2011), created for my practice-led PhD Memory, Place and Subjectivities: Experiments in Independent Documentary Filmmaking, 2014. Available at: http://www.academia.edu/22214782/Memory_Place_and_Subjectivity_Experiments_in_Independent_Documentary_Filmmaking.

2. Notable examples are Ngozi Onwurah’s The Body Beautiful (1990); Marlon Riggs Tongues Untied (1989); Dziga Vertov’s Man With a Movie Camera (1929).

3. See for example, Carol Morley’s The Alcohol Years (2000); Sarah Polley’s The Stories We Tell (2012); Rea Tajiri’s History and Memory: For Akiko and Takashige (1991).