Archiveology: Walter Benjamin and Archival Film Practices

In Archiveology Catherine Russell uses the work of Walter Benjamin to explore how the practice of archiveology—the reuse, recycling, appropriation, & borrowing of archival sounds & images by filmmakers—provides ways to imagine the past & the future. Noting how the film archive does not function simply as a place where moving images are preserved, Russell examines a range of films alongside Benjamin's conceptions of memory, document, excavation, & historiography. 

She shows how city films such as Nicole Védrès's Paris 1900 (1947) & Thom Andersen's Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003) reconstruct notions of urban life & uses Christian Marclay's The Clock (2010) to draw parallels between critical cinephilia & Benjamin's theory of the phantasmagoria. Russell also discusses practices of collecting in archiveological film & rereads films by Joseph Cornell & Rania Stephan to explore an archival practice that dislocates & relocates the female image in film. 

In so doing, she not only shows how Benjamin's work is as relevant to film theory as ever; she shows how archiveology can awaken artists & audiences to critical forms of history & memory.