Bernadette, Duncan Campbell, image courtesy of LUX

Duncan Campbell’s films are documentaries, but documentaries that test the boundaries of the form, acknowledging, in Campbell’s words, that ‘documentary is a peculiar form of fiction.’  Using archival material – images of bygone youth culture and urban decay in Falls Burns Malone Fiddles (2004) and footage of dissident and Activist Bernadette Devlin in Bernadette (2008) – Campbell attempts to gain perspective on a recent past already so subject to mediation, spin and re-presentation that any notion of objective truth has to be surrendered.

For more innovative archive-raiding films, take a look at George Clark’s Seven Wonders piece on found film footage.