Battle of the bizarre: Found Footage Festival takes on Found Magazine
Even before the Internet came along and gave every dope with a smartphone the ability to broadcast to the entire world, the 20th century’s advancements in technology provided people of even modest means the ability to document their lives. Gadgets like pocket tape recorders, camcorders, and Polaroid cameras became common household items, affordable and widely available. Of course, as more and more people used these tools, the ostensibly worthless garbage they produced quickly piled up. But while most would be content to let these recordings, photos, and bits of paper be consigned to landfills, a few intrepid explorers have taken it upon themselves to preserve and celebrate these unique and ephemeral artifacts.
Two outfits at the forefront of this new breed of collectors and curators are the Found Footage Festival and Found Magazine. The Found Footage Festival screens the best of the worst of the videos filling up our nation’s thrift stores and Dumpsters, while Found Magazine publishes lost love letters, odd shopping lists, and candid photos. Despite pursuing similar missions, the two were only finally brought together through a chance encounter. “We’d been aware of each other,” says Nick Prueher, who, along with his childhood friend Joe Pickett, started the Found Footage Festival. “We’d been doing similar things for almost as many years, and we just never, for whatever reason, crossed paths until earlier this year in Madison, [Wisconsin,] when we happened to be booked at the same theater on the same night. We felt like long-lost brothers and, as brothers have a tendency to do, our natural instinct was to fight it out.”
Thus, Found Vs. Found was born (coming to Milwaukee Nov. 15 at the Oriental Theater), a fierce, no-holds-barred cage match, from which only one competitor can emerge alive ... or maybe not so much. “The rivalry is not as bitter as we’re probably going to make it out to be,” says Found Magazine Editor and Co-creator Davy Rothbart. “The truth is, I celebrate the world of found in all its forms, so if we do take the loss, which we won’t, I won’t feel too bad.”
It will be gentlemanly contest perhaps, but surely one with clearly defined rules and rigorous scorekeeping, right? “I think ultimately whoever wins will be fairly arbitrary,” says Prueher. “The way we’ve set it up is there are three rounds, where we each take a turn showing off our all-time greatest finds. It ultimately might come down to, I don’t know, an audience arm wrestling match or something, but there will be a winner at the end of each night, if for nothing else than to determine who buys drinks.”
Despite being in direct, if friendly, competition, the two sides cover opposite ends of the found spectrum. Although home movies are certainly included, the FFF mainly specializes in preserving footage that was made to be seen, from bizarre instructional videos to ineptly produced public access TV shows. “These tapes would otherwise be lost to the ages,” explains Prueher. “There’s no temperature-controlled vault for the Angela Lansbury exercise tape, and the American Film Institute doesn’t have any interest in hanging on to these things. But for my money, I think these kinds of videos say a lot more about us as a culture than a lot of the polished, greatest films of the last century. In a way, these are more honest reflections of who we are as a people, warts and all, and I think that’s worth hanging on to.”
Found Magazine, on the other hand, highlights the personal and the private, providing a window into people’s lives that could easily seem invasive if the items hadn’t been acquired by pure chance. “I think the found notes help you get deeper into the hearts and minds of the people we share the world with,” says Rothbart. “It stokes your curiosity; it makes you want to know more about the people sitting next to you on the bus, the strangers you see in the elevator or walking down the street. What’s going in their life? What’s their interior life like?”
But the two camps do approach their acquisitions with a similar spirit, one that acknowledges the ludicrous nature of some of the finds without being dickish about it. As Rothbart puts it, “One critical element is enjoying and appreciating the material without mocking the subjects, and being respectful of the people who have written these found notes or created these found videos. I laugh because I’ve written the same pitiful love note a hundred times myself, and I’m relating to it instead of just finding an easy way to make fun of it. Nick and Joe have a collection of really bizarre and wonderfully weird videos, but they find the humanizing aspects of them, and that’s where the humor really comes from.”
For those looking to do their part for the cause, both the Found Footage Festival and Found Magazine love to receive submissions, and encourage fans to bring their own finds to the shows. But even if you’re not convinced that this lovable junk needs saving, you can attend safe in the knowledge that the presenters aren’t the only ones reaping the rewards, as the tour also aims to raise money for local organizations around the country, from food banks to arts programs. “In each city, we have a lot of friends who are doing really awesome grassroots work in neighborhoods and local communities,” says Rothbart. “So we just thought we’d make each show a benefit, and both try and raise awareness of some work people are doing, and try to throw a little money their way.”
