Archival and Fake Found Footage as Medial Figurations in Hungarian Experimental Filmmaking

Abstract

In the theoretical discourse of archival footage a shift can be detected from the paradigm of recontextualization to that of rhetorical strategy. In terms of this shift, archival footage is no longer regarded as a mode of transparent representation of “reality”, but rather as figuration that creates productive tension in the course of interaction of moving images. Archival footage acquires a prominent role in Hungarian experimental filmmaking. The present paper focuses on films by two Hungarian experimental filmmakers, Gábor Bódy and András Jeles, in which the archival material stages the confrontation between private memory and historical consciousness. The article especially focuses on the role of fake found footage and archival footage in Gábor Bódy’s American Torso (Amerikai anzix, 1975) and András Jeles’s Parallel Lives (Senkiföldje, 1993).