What is film archaeology?

This site is dedicated to film and video archaeology or the cinemachines that has shaped film history. It is based on my master thesis in Art History called "The Cinemachines as Method" (2016) - which it translates and expands.

What is film archaeology?

It is important to distinguish film archaeology from three trends that are closely related to it, yet strictly speaking different from it: Pre-filmic history, the broad media archaeology and general film history.

Pre-filmic history

One meaning of "archaeology" - for example, as used by Laurent Mannoni - means the study of film history before Lumiere. These are often referred to as "pre-filmic" period, suggesting that "film" is only established with the cinematograph.

While film archaeology is highly inspired by pre-filmic history - not at least Werner Nekes' amazing collection and writings by Mannoni and others - these cinemachines are only part of what is called "film archaeology". Contrary to the archaeological approach, I consider many of the devices as filmic as such, listing them within the "optical" or "mechanical" environment of cinemachines. And on the other hand, some devices that are part of this field of study because they are pre-cursors of cinema, are not considered filmic as such (e.g. camera obscura, zoegrascope, etc. - devices which undeniably influenced the development of cinema, but which in themselves are not cinematic).

Media archaeology

The second trend is media archaeology as formulated by [Huhtamo] and others. These are once again inspiring studies on how media influence each other over time - yet only some are cinematic, while other are not (typewriter and so on).

The term "archaeology" in film archaeology is closely related to the Foucault inspired approach in media archaeology. Foucault criticizes the canonized "history" as a dominant discourse which ignores or rejects the "other stories". []

[Vilhelm Flusser]

Film history

As explained above, there's an obvious distinction from film history, because film archaeology tries to challenge the dominant discourse and fragment it into film histories or genealogies. But furthermore, I would stress the distinction from film history in the aspect that film archaeology deals with the materialist approach to film history.

This trend is not new, as others have tried to establish a materialist approach to film history, eg. Barry Salt, [cinematic apparatus], study of production systems and so on. However, the major distinction from film history is thus:

The primary "objects" of film archaeology is not the film artifacts themselves (whether it's fiction film, experimental film, video installation, a TV commercial, and so on) - it's the cinemachines that create these that are the field of study. Film artifacts as well as demonstrations, manuals, work prints, [] are, of course, part of the empirical material that makes the study of cinemachines possible. But it is important to notice that the cinemachine is an object in itself, meaning that even machines that has made just one film - or even none - in the traditional sense, can be part of the field.

The Goal of Film Archaeology

Why this approach then?

I came to the film archaeological approach by a different road. My initial concern was with the epistemology of film. [] I came across mediality studies which provide some very useful tools for analyzing the behavior of a specific medium and comparing it to other. Many of my own observations were suddenly systematic when I found mediality studies and especially Lars Elleström's model.

The weakness of mediality studies - at least when it comes to film mediality - is how broad the domain actually is. There are several types of practices within film making (some which can be considered "film language" and some which are defined by film materiality). But even here, there are distinct material practices that shape a film.

Langue and parole are used here - again, the "work" or artifact is but one "parole" of the general langue of cinema. In this way, the study of one parole can indirectly analyze the langue as such.

Material, Machine, Mediality

My suggestion is to insert "machine" as an intermediate level between materiality and mediality, which closer reflects the material boundaries of a given technology, while at the same time relating to "cinema" as such. Rather than going from work or artifact to mediality, we can analyze how certain structures in a work are inherited or constituted by the machine(s) that made it. And these machines are once again manifestations of the general film mediality as such.

Consequences of Film Archaeology

Several aspects of film studies are influenced by film archaeology. To name a few these are genres and formats (which are unified by these studies), periods (which are replaced by environments) and the introduction of techno-genealogy as parallel to iconographic influence.

Furthermore, film archaeology deals with "technology styles" (like Gottfried Semper), and I will suggest the term "algorithm" to analyze how a cinemachine constitutes structures in a cinematic artifact.

Critique of the Camera as the Cinemachine

Very important!

Downfall of genre and format

The normal boundaries of genre and format are not important.

The dominant "camera"

Periods replaced by Environments

"Pre-filmic" and "post-filmic" (and "para-filmic")

Geneaology

As counter-histories??

Algorithm

Input/output-systems