Critical Writing Index

Found Footage Film as Discursive Metahistory: Craig Baldwin's "Tribulation 99"

by Michael Zryd

The Moving Image, Oct 2003, v. 3, no. 2, pp. 40-61

ISSN 1532-3978

Michael Zryd discusses in this essay how the use of found footage filmmaking allows for a rethinking of cultural discourses and narrative patterns behind history. Specifically how experimental found footage films work with montage to disclose the malleability of images taken as truth. In reorganizing and recontextualizing official and unofficial images from the past, these films allow for a rethinking of how history is constructed.

Looking at Craig Baldwin's Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies Under America (1992), Zryd argues that rather than representing history, the movie analyzes the historical discourses and political forces that motivate historical events. He states that it is a "committed leftist satire directed at American foreign policy and media culture" and shows how found footage can offer metahistorical analysis and complex political critique.

ITEM 2003.163 – available for viewing in the Research Centre

Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited

Tribulation 99Craig Baldwin