• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.33
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• pp.317-341
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• 2013

Found Footage Film has been increasingly addressed between film and visual art world in the age of rapid media change. With regards to this self-conscious found footage filmmaking, narrative structures are unraveled to relate new stories, images are removed from their original context only to reappear in a different context, new layers that alter the meaning are added, stereotypes from Hollywood movies are exposed, and new montages are used to destroy the illusion of the medium itself. The physical properties of the original material are also emphasized or altered in order to add a new meaning. The starting point of this study is the recognition of the origin of found footage film. It traces back to the found object from primitive impulse and found art from Dada and surrealism. Many found footage films have been at least partly inspired by Duchamp's ready-mades. These films use footages that the filmmakers did not shot, and even footage that was never intended as art. This essay deals with the found footage practices and interrogates the aesthetic implications by the concept of self-reflexivity. Self-reflexivity means consciousness turning back on itself, and found footage film is about films which call attention to themselves as cinematic constructs. It breaks with art as illusionism and exposes their own factitiousness as textual constructs. Furthermore, the inevitable mortality of celluloid and temporal reconstruction of original film will be treated. Recentely, many attention has been given to role of Found Footage Film. I hope to add the understanding of the artistic found footage film with this study.