Baron J. - The Archive Effect

The Archive Effect

History persists and seldom more powerfully than in filmed images our externalized form of memory. What happens when the past meets the present in films that draw on archival films and photographs to engender meaning? Barons explorations of this question are original and eye-opening. It will change how we think about the archive and the persistence of history.

Bill Nichols, San Francisco State University, specialist film consultant and author

The Archive Effect: Found Footage and the Audiovisual Experience of History examines the problems of representation inherent in the appropriation of archival film and video footage for historical purposes. Baron analyzes the way in which the meanings of archival documents are modified when they are placed in new texts and contexts, constructing the viewers experience of and relationship to the past they portray. Rethinking the notion of the archival document in terms of its reception and the spectatorial experiences it generates, she explores the archive effect as it is produced across the genres of documentary, mockumentary, experimental, and fiction films. This engaging work discusses how, for better or for worse, the archive effect is mobilized to create new histories, alternative histories, and misreadings of history.

The book covers a multitude of contemporary cultural artefacts including fiction films such as Zelig, Forrest Gump, and JFK; mockumentaries such as The Blair Witch Project and Forgotten Silver; documentaries such as Standard Operating Procedure and Grizzly Man; and videogames such as Call of Duty: World at War. In addition, it examines the works of many experimental filmmakers including those of Pter Forgcs, Adele Horne, Bill Morrison, Cheryl Dunye, and Natalie Bookchin.

Jaimie Baron is an assistant professor at the University of Alberta, Canada. Her research focuses on the production and transformation of human experience through technology. She is also the founder and director of the Festival of (In)appropriation, an annual international showcase of short, experimental found footage films.

The Archive Effect

Found footage and the audiovisual experience of history

Jaimie Baron

First published 2014

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2014 Jaimie Baron

The right of Jaimie Baron to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

The archive effect : found footage and the audiovisual experience of history / edited by Jaimie Baron.

pages cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Stock footage. 2. Archival materials. 3. Experimental filmsHistory and criticism. 4. Context effects (Psychology) 5. Time in motion pictures. 6. Motion pictures and history. I. Title.

PN1995.9.S6964B37 2013

025.1773dc23

2013022802

ISBN: 978-0-415-66072-3 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-415-66073-0 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-203-06693-5 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo

by Cenveo Publisher Services

For Jonathan, my special effect

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Numerous people generously gave their time to help me with this project, reading drafts and listening to me work through my ideas, offering provocative questions I might otherwise have overlooked. I would like to thank Wendy Belcher, Siobahn Byrne, John Caldwell, Greg Cohen, Heather Collette-Vanderaa, Roger Hallas, Ilona Hongisto, Eve Luckring, Kathleen McHugh, Michael Renov, Steven Ricci, Sharon Romeo, and Patrik Sjberg for their contributions to my thinking about the archive effect. Thanks especially to Lauren Berliner, Allyson Field, Maja Manojlovic, and Victoria Meng for in addition to offering invaluable comments always believing in me and boosting my confidence when it began to flag.

I would also like to thank the many filmmakers who took the time to speak with me in detail about their work, in particular Rebecca Baron, Natalie Bookchin, Douglas Goodwin, Adele Horne, William E. Jones, Raquel Schefer, and Leslie Thornton. Thanks also to Douglas Goodwin for his stunning design work for the book cover.

I want to thank my editor Natalie Foster for supporting this project and my anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments on my manuscript.

My wonderful parents, Ruthellen Josselson and Hanoch Flum, have been the ground that has allowed me to reach this place; and without the love and support of Jonathan Cohn, this book would not have become a reality. He makes the work and my life worthwhile.

Most of all, I want to thank my advisor, mentor, and friend Vivian Sobchack, who gave so much time, energy, and attention to reading my work, commenting thoroughly on everything from conceptual gaps to comma placement. She has always pushed me to become a clearer thinker and better writer, and, without her, I would not be the scholar I am. She embodies all that I value about the intellectual project and I am truly lucky to know her.

History, the archive, and the appropriation of the indexical document

Silent black and white images, scarred by dust and scratches, of World War II planes dropping bombs on the landscape below. Men in top hats dodging horse-drawn carriages and early model cars on the streets of San Francisco during the early-twentieth century. African-American protestors confronting the police and members of the Ku Klux Klan during the Civil Rights Movement. Martin Luther King Jr. telling us of his dream. Neil Armstrong stepping onto the moon. A Chinese student standing alone in front of a tank as it advances towards him in Tiananmen Square. Despite the very different contexts from which they emerge, all of these images might be referred to as archival footage and understood as evidence of past events. Each of these images is compelling even if at least without added narration and contextualization its precise meaning is sometimes obscure. Such images seem to bring us into contact with the past, to offer us a glimpse of a world that existed but has been erased and overlaid with different faces, current fashions, and new technologies. Indeed, the past seems to become not only knowable but also perceptible in these images. They offer us an experience of pastness, an experience that no written word can quite match.

But what is this experience of pastness? And how is it connected to history, which generally connotes an official and objective account of past events? In other words, what exactly is archival footage and how does it shape our experience as well as our understanding of the past and, hence, of history? Despite our frequent encounters with what we may recognize as archival sounds and images, just what they are and how they contribute to the construction of history has in recent years become increasingly uncertain.