found footage

Loveboard

Felipe Casanova, Belgium, Switzerland, 2023, 17’

A broken phone and the digital memory of a broken queer relationship. Through the careful manipulation of discarnate metal components and the filmmaker’s attentive look at an intimate archive, a fading first love surfaces. Loveboard is a playful reflection on what remains.

The Motherfucker’s Birthday

Saif Alsaegh, Iraq, USA, 2024, 6’

Through dancing, The Motherfucker’s Birthday shows the evil of the dictator and the horror people endure under powerful political leaders. The film presents dancing, a universal and uniquely human activity often representing joy, with eerie footage of Saddam and his sons’ torture tools while they dance.

Now! (Santiago Álvarez, 1965)

Now!

Santiago Álvarez, Cuba, 1965, 5’

Using newsreel footage and a song by Lena Horne, Cuban filmmaker Santiago Alvarez fired off Now!, one of the most powerful bursts of 1960s propaganda. Made almost entirely from existing newsreel footage, the film tackled the pressing political issues of the time, from racism to imperialism.

Grandmamauntsistercat (Zuza Banasińska, 2024)

Grandmamauntsistercat

Zuza Banasińska, Poland, The Netherlands, 2024, 23’

Zuza Banasińska reinvents the famous Slavic witch Baba Yaga through a clever montage of films from the Polish Educational Film Studio archive, containing sexist content. Questioning their own non-binary identity, they unleash the queer dimension of found footage tasked with conveying a normative conception of identity.

Because We Are Visual

Gerard-Jan Claes, Olivia Rochette, Belgium, 2010, 47’

By means of visual material gathered from online sources, filmmakers Olivia Rochette and Gerard-Jan Claes create a unique poetic realm in which thoughts, fears, desires, and worries are shared via webcam, and merge together.

This film is no longer available

Very Nice, Very Nice

Arthur Lipsett, Canada, 1961, 7’

This avant-garde work exposes how we hide behind a façade in times of crisis, as if nothing is wrong. Arthur Lipsett’s first collage film mixes dozens of black-and-white photographs with audio fragments of casual conversations. Occasionally, a voice preaches: “Very nice, very nice.” The film’s subtle criticism of the 1960s zeitgeist in the United States earned it an Oscar nomination.

This film is no longer available

And How Miserable Is The Home of Evil

Saleh Kashefi, Iran, 2023, 7’

At the time of writing, early 2026, the situation in Iran is completely incomprehensible to the outside world, but above all, life-threatening for its inhabitants. The dream of an Iran post-Islamic Republic is not only part of the online discourse, but also of the protests on the streets. This is precisely what Iranian visual artist Saleh Kashefi depicts in their award-winning video And How Miserable is the Home of Evil: accompanied by an oppressive soundscape full of dissent, Iran’s Supreme Leader (finally) falls.

Love Goes Through The Stomach

NEOZOON, Germany, 2017, 15’

Dedicated to nutrition and the human attitude towards “production animals”, this YouTube-found footage collage provides disturbing insights into the behaviour of a Western affluent society towards animal products.