Press release: Found Footage Festival
For Immediate Release
January 13, 2010
FOUND FOOTAGE FESTIVAL MAKES CHARLOTTE DEBUT
The Light Factory welcomes FFF Curators for Fifth Anniversary
Charlotte, NC – The Found Footage Festival, the acclaimed touring showcase of odd and hilarious found videos, will make its first-ever appearance in Charlotte at The Light Factory with an all-new show. Hosts Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher, whose credits include “The Onion” and the “Late Show with David Letterman,” are excited to present a brand-new lineup of found video clips and live comedy Saturday, Jan. 30, at 8:00 p.m. in The Light Factory’s Knight Gallery. Tickets are $10 for non-members and $7 for members of The Light Factory. More information is available by logging onto www.lightfactory.org.
The Found Footage Festival is a one-of-a-kind event showcasing videos found at garage sales and thrift stores and in warehouses and dumpsters throughout the country. Curators Pickett and Prueher host each screening in-person and provide their unique observations and commentary on these found video obscurities. From the curiously-produced industrial training video to the forsaken home movie donated to Goodwill, the Found Footage Festival resurrects these forgotten treasures and serves them up in a lively celebration of all things found.
Among the videos to be featured in the 2010 program:
• A collection of the worst Saturday morning cartoons ever to surface on VHS
• Highlights from a 1987 video dating reel found by David Cross
• A home movie taken at a 1985 heavy metal festival outside Washington, D.C.
• A brand-new compilation of exercise videos featuring Dolph Lundgren, Milton Berle, and WWF’s The Bushwhackers
The Found Footage Festival was founded in New York in 2004 and has gone on to sell out hundreds of shows across the U.S. and Canada, including the HBO Comedy Festival at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal. The festival has been featured on National Public Radio, “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” and G4 “TV’s Attack of the Show,” and has been named a critic’s pick in dozens of publications, including “The Village Voice,” “Los Angeles Times,” “San Francisco Chronicle” and “The Chicago Tribune.”
Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett began collecting found videotapes in 1991 after stumbling across a training video entitled, “Inside and Outside Custodial Duties,” at a McDonald’s in their home state of Wisconsin. Since then, they have compiled an impressive collection of strange, outrageous and profoundly stupid videos. Pickett, a former film technician, and Prueher, a former researcher at the “Late Show with David Letterman,” have written for “The Onion” and “Entertainment Weekly” and recently directed the award-winning documentary, “Dirty Country” now available on DVD. For more information about them and Found Footage Festival: www.foundfootagefest.com.
The Light Factory is supported by Basic Operating Grants from the Arts and Science Council of Charlotte-Mecklenburg and North Carolina Arts Council.
The Light Factory is one of only four museums in the United States that promote the power of image through photography and film. For more than 30 years, The Light Factory has served students, artists and the public at large by offering film screenings, photography exhibits, classes and outreach programs that promote media literacy and self expression using the most powerful mediums of our time. The Light Factory is a 501c3, non-profit organization. To find out more about The Light Factory or make a donation visit www.lightfactory.org.
###
