An annual showcase of cutting-edge, experimental, found-media film and video

Founded in 2009, the Festival of (In)appropriation is a preeminent international showcase for experimental, found-media film and video. Every year, the Festival attracts artists working across an astonishing array of moving-image formats while probing the limits of collage, machinima, re-mix, détournement, mash-up, and more. The raw material for their work derives from the abundant new sources of audiovisual media to have surfaced in recent decades, from official state and commercial archives to vernacular collections, home movie repositories, and digital databases of every stripe.

By exploiting and refashioning these pre-existing materials, such creations generate novel juxtapositions and recombinations, often producing ideas and meanings that were unintended or unimagined by the original makers. These remarkable works, in other words, are “inappropriate” in the profoundest sense of the term.

Sponsored by Los Angeles Filmforum, the Festival of (In)appropriation strives to evince the remarkable range, sophistication, and critical impact of this vital aesthetic practice.