The Found Footage Festival, the festival that celebrates salvaged video tape footage from the sublime to the ridiculous, will return to London this month for a four night run at Soho Theatre.
The festival showcases bizarre videos unearthed at thrift shops, warehouses, garage sales and bins throughout America (with a few thrown in from England this time around).
Curators Joe Pickett, of The Onion and Nick Prueher of The David Letterman Show will play host in person, providing running commentaries throughout the evening.
Expect 90 minutes of questionable corporate training videos, strange home movies, and AV club relics. Highlights from the tour include ‘The Sexy Treadmill Workout’, a drunken spring break trip to Florida in 1985, and highlights from a 1996 video about how to care for your ferret.
Joe and Nick began collecting video tapes in 1991 when they happened upon a training video called ‘Inside and Outside Custodial Duties’ in a McDonalds break room. They founded the festival in New York in 2004, and have gone on to tour across Europe and America.
The pair insist on only two rules for the festival: 1. Footage must be found on physical format (no YouTube!). 2. It has to be unintentionally funny. Whatever it’s trying to do, it has to fail miserably at that.
The show will run from 27-30 March 2013 at 9.30pm. Tickets are £15 and available via the Found Footage Festival website.
By Lucy Jordan. Image courtesy of the Found Footage Festival.