The Found Footage Festival has been around for well over a decade, touring the country with an analog aficionado’s selection of pan-and-scan VHS ephemera. Unlike a lot of underground/bootleg/nostalgia-based shows, which typically depend on raw enthusiasm and audience discomfort, FFF’s productions are clever, tightly edited montages without any distortion or remixing—think of them as a very ADD-friendly approach to surveying the especially goofy bits in your mom’s old workout videos. And even after numerous iterations, this year’s slate of videos is a fun mix of ’80s and ’90s time capsules ranging from satanic panic interviews to ineffective cat training techniques—seasoned with some considerably more upsetting subjects that include, but are not limited to, ferret placentas, pee drinking, and problematic police training videos.
I got a chance to speak with Nick Prueher, who, along with co-host Joe Pickett, has been running FFF since its inception.