Recut, Reframe: Archival Documentaries Member Only

Archives used to be a place you visited. Now it is the water we swim in. Every documentary maker is also a media consumer, algorithmically served a version of history, culture, and current events that shapes what stories seem worth telling and how. Alongside the constant stream of new images and the rise of new academic, commercial, and amateur archives, the formal possibilities of working with existing or found material have exploded accordingly: all-archival films that reconstruct historical moments without a single new image; video essays that turn pop culture into critical argument; mixed-media work that layers found footage against new forms to produce meanings neither could generate alone. This conversation brings together filmmakers and media makers working across the full range of these approaches, from immersive archival assemblage to YouTube explainers, to probe what documentarians should know about one of our most foundational techniques and material sources today.

Moderator: Miriam Bale
Panelists: Marley McDonald (Time Bomb Y2K), Kevan MacKay (BobbyBroccoli), and Miguel Coyula (Chronicles of the Absurd)