When it comes to finding a genre which is easily accessible to the general public in terms of being easy to make and enjoyable to watch, found-footage is seemingly the overall de facto king. The genre is typically low-cost and easy to produce and a proven draw. It is also one of the few populist examples of conceptual art as the films are presented as the audience is directly viewing the so-called found footage, which is often presented as shot by an amateur, rather than a completed project, this factor separates it from mockumentary.
Yet despite the genre’s popularity and artistic merits, scholarly study of the genre is mostly lacking as evident by the deep misunderstanding of the genre’s history. As two recent productions, Shudder’s short feature Host (Rob Savage/2020) and the podcast Astonishing Legends’ (Scott Philbrook and Forrest Burgess/2014-) exploration of the hoax film Alien Autopsy (unknown/1995), have sparked public interest in the genre once again it seems like a good time to explore this misunderstood history.
To begin with, the popularization of found footage is very clear. At the 1992 Cannes Film Festival Man Bites Dogs (Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel, and Benoît Poelvoorde/1992) garnered critical acclaim and a cult fanbase, that same year Ghostwatch (Lesley Manning/1992) presented many of the genre’s core elements to the British public with its haunted broadcast approach on BBC, The Blair Witch Project (Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez/1999) introduced the genre to the American general public on a large scale (note: despite coming earlier and having a mainstream release Alien Autopsy was a full-fledged hoax rather than a conventional film like The Blair Witch Project) and Paranormal Actively (Oren Peli/2007) caused found footage to flood the market. This history is mostly settled and will not be discussed further. What will be discussed is where the genre starts.
A quick Google search of the phrase “first found footage film” will produce the following answer: Cannibal Holocaust (Ruggero Deodato/1979). This claim is backed up by publications and organizations like IndieWire, Syfy, and Cult MLT. On the surface, a film showing the footage of a lost film crew that came out years before most other early found footage films seems like a no brainer but ultimately the claims Cannibal Holocaust even belongs in the genre is fairly bogus. Found footage as mentioned is conceptual filmmaking and due to its framing device, a professor viewing the footage after retrieving it from the Amazon, eliminates any claim that Cannibal Holocaust is part of the genre.
Cannibal Holocaust’s status seems more rooted in the film’s marketing, which infamously claimed what was shown on screen was real, than the content of the film itself which raises the question: If Cannibal Holocaust is to be granted the status of first found footage film because of this marketing tactic than what about Snuff (Michael Findlay and Horacio Fredriksson/1976) a film that claimed to present a real murder on camera? Snuff’s footage is far more clearly staged than Cannibal Holocaust but it none the less made the exact same claim in its marketing. For this reason, it is best to simply reject these sorts of films, along with Guinea Pig 2: Flower of Flesh and Blood (Hideshi Hino/1985), a film western audiences believed was a snuff film, and Faces of Death (John Alan Schwartz/1978) from the conversation.
If Cannibal Holocaust is out, what takes its spot? If one were to ask Brad Miska, co-founder of Bloody Disgusting, the answer is UFO Abduction (Dean Alioto/1989). Unlike Cannibal Holocaust, UFO Abduction uses the found footage formula perfectly. It was so well done that when the film was rebranded as The McPherson Tape by bootleggers it became incredibly popular with UFOlogists and underground film collectors who believed it to be the real deal. Its popularity in the underground eventually led Alioto to remake the film for UPN as Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County (Dean Alioto/1998).
Miska’s claims on paper are hard to dispute due to how perfectly done UFO Abduction is but the claim ignores some high profile works that came prior.
The most noted example is experimental film icon Shirley Clarke’s jazz drama The Connection (Shirley Clarke/1961) which attempted to avoid censorship by framing itself as a lost documentary film. While the film does uses some found footage concepts, it stays very close conventional filmmaking, in many ways closer to a mockumentary than found footage, and due to it was born out of a well-known stage play and this fact was largely known to the public the illusion was largely never present. Despite these factors, outlets such as The New Yorker have deemed it a “primordial found footage film.”
The Connection is the first film listed on Wikipedia’s list of found footage films, followed by Cannibal Holocaust, Guinea Pig 2: Flower of Flesh and Blood, and UFO Abduction, if the first films listed can be eliminated does anything predate UFO Abduction? Yes, a year prior underground gay porn icon Bruce LaBruce and friend Candy Parker made the short Bruce and Pepper Wayne Gacy’s Home Movies (Bruce LaBruce and Candy Parker/1988) starring LaBruce and cult punk figures G. B. Jones and Dave Dictor. The film follows the same approach as UFO Abduction in most ways expect its release, while UFO Abduction took to the home video market and played off of “is it real?” hype Bruce and Pepper Wayne Gacy’s Home Movies took to art galleries and festivals and never was presented as truly authentic.
Even with Bruce and Pepper Wayne Gacy’s Home Movies the question of the first found footage film remains unknown and disputed as there are other noteworthy examples, such as ITV’s conspiracy spawning sci-fi TV film Alternative 3 (Christopher Miles/1977), and as serious academic research into this history is lacking the true launching pad may always remain a mystery.
For a genre so popular, artistically interesting, and seemingly as young as found footage to have such a hazy history is very strange and something that in 2020 should be made clear. Perhaps it’s time for a serious film scholar to dive in.
M Rooney is a filmmaker and programmer from Toronto, Canada. He studied fine art at Thompson Rivers University.
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