Colombian found footage: The tradition of rupture

This article examines the use of archival footage in Colombian cinema, following three lines of enquiry: film as meta-history, film as montage and video recycling as counter-information. First, the section on ‘film as meta-history’ studies the historical discourse on Colombian cinema in three films by Luis Ospina: En busca de María/In Search of María (Ospina and Nieto, 1985); the series on film history De la ilusión al desconcierto/From Illusion to Confusion (2007); and the ‘epic collage’ Un tigre de papel/A Paper Tiger (2007a). Second, ‘film as montage’ addresses Fragmentos/Fragments (Santa and Campos, 1999) and Paraíso/Paradise (Guerrero, 2006), two films that critically address the discontinuity and fragmentation of Colombia’s history. Finally, ‘video recycling as counter-information’ explores the media news as a source of archival construction through a group of five films produced by students and professors at the University of Valle (Cali, Colombia) that show a more radical way of understanding television news produced during periods of political polarization.