ABSTRACT
This chapter examines compilation film as an example of what one call "archiveology", by reading it against Walter Benjamin's theory and practice of history. Archiveology refers to the reuse, recycling, appropriation, and borrowing of archival material that filmmakers have been doing for decades, in found-footage filmmaking, compilation films, and collage and essay modes. Archaeology seeks the conditions for discourse, working outside disciplinary boundaries; archiveology produces a language of history from media archives through practice. Benjamin's dialectical and non-linear concept of history is particularly appropriate to archiveology as a critical mode of image recycling. The perspective from the digital era brings into relief Paris 1900's innovative montage-based treatment of history in which the moving-image archive is mobilized for uncanny, allegorical effects. In digital culture, the compilation model has taken on new dimensions that may align it with the essayistic mode, constructing histories from fragments of other histories.
