From Junk To Funk To Punk To Link

Abstract

Among the rich and richly varied filmways of the Bay Area can be found that rather special practice known as the “Found-Footage” (FF) film. There can be little doubt that this mode of making has enjoyed a particularly prominent place in the local tradition…but why, exactly? As an FF practitioner myself, I would like to float a few possible contributing factors, and then sketch out a (necessarily partial) chronology of this curious activity in these here parts. Even curiouser, how could the overt use of pre-fabricated industrial images flourish in a regional film culture that so vigorously valorizes “the personal”?