ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 examines the experiments with digital archival remix at Amsterdam’s Eye Film Museum (Eye) within the longer history of its institutional predecessor, the Netherlands Film Museum (NFM). Staring in the 1980s, the NFM’s focus shifted from canonical avant-garde films to lesser-known titles from the transitional period (1907 to 1916) and unidentified early film fragments. Inspired by found-footage filmmaking, curators began splicing unidentified early film fragments together, creating what came to be known as the Bits & Pieces compilations. These innovations paved the way for Eye’s later remix experiments, including Celluloid Remix and Jan Bot, which I analyze through Gadamer’s concepts of part and whole, pointing to their limits as alternative forms of non-linear historical discourse.
