ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the reasons for the low survival rates for media objects, reasons for looking past archival absence, and approaches for finding presence in the absence of viewable materials. The connection of archival efforts to commercial success has produced an especially acute problem for nontheatrical film, marginal cinema practices, amateur media making, and even televised programs. Films produced in regions that have experienced political instability or conflict are disproportionately impacted, as are media kept in under-resourced archives or in regions environmentally inhospitable to preservation. Films, of course, can be found, and these finds, however rare they might be, should be celebrated. Strategies for “looking adjacently” will vary depending on the type of media, the era in which it was produced, and the questions the scholar is interested in addressing. Understanding film as a cultural agent produced in and reflective of a particular time and place allows us to approach it through its surrounding context, even in its absence.
