ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the complexities of perception, hallucination, and gendered matter within the archives of film history. The Film of Her transforms Howard Walls into a nameless clerk, one heroically responsible for re-discovering the Paper Print Collection, but tragically displaced by official history is fired and forgotten, a Niver-esque figure stealing credit and spotlight. From early life to early cinema to individual childhood, section of The Film of Her endopsychically links a world-containing archive with a primal scene of archive fever. Gustav Deutsch is a prominent figure in the Austrian film avant-garde and, like many within that world, especially interested in creative recycling of found footage from less recent film history. A distance from distance must be maintained. This aporia between distance and a distance from distance structures Bill Morrison and Deutsch's montages of erotic early cinema, where archive and woman play off each other in a game of presence and absence.
