“Let Every Eye Negotiate for Itself”: Reflections on the Construction of History, Memory, and Oblivion in the Audiovisual Practice of Found Footage, Compilation Cinema, and Archive Cinema

Víctor Martín García

From a theoretical perspective, this research delves deeper into the audiovisual practices known as found footage, compilation cinema, and archive cinema by seeking to clarify certain aspects of this practice, by adopting the ideological discourse inherent to it, and by analyzing the forms in which the message is codified. Particular attention is given to those audiovisual manifestations of found footage that pose the most pressing questions about the construction of history and memory (both collective and individual) and which at the same time suggest new discursive hypotheses through experimentation with the medium.
When motivated by the wish to reread historical discourses, the work with archive images implies that the same images and their manipulation reveal new perspectives on the historical event itself as a result of new readings undertaken in different contexts. This derives partly from the subjectivity of those engaged in the narrative re-elaboration, with a consequent opening of the research to authors who move between non-fiction cinema and artistic activity. The point of departure for the research is to be found in the paradigms developed in the decades following the Second World War. The political and social situation of this period stimulated the need for innovative cinematographic works and narrative systems capable of describing events by freeing themselves from prevailing stylistic features. In this way, it is possible to determine aspects of the practice of found footage that clarify the mode, uses, reception, and appropriation of images within the historical discourse and the discourse on memory.