ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the way in which certain found footage films offer keen insights into the complex relationship between historical events and their recorded traces, as well as the workings of cultural hierarchies that determine certain audiovisual materials as valuable and others as waste, and how these categories are highly unstable. It reflects on films that re-present images of specific historical moments, of political and technological transformation, in order to elucidate what happens when old factual footage is taken out of its original context and inscribed into a new discourse. In particular, it offers an in-depth analysis of The Atomic Cafe (Jayne Loader, Kevin Rafferty and Pierce Rafferty, 1982), an audacious approach to the audiovisual remains of nuclear fear and paranoia.
