Research Statement

Research Questions

How does our constructed map of contemporary society inform the potential trajectory of future societal developments? Do the archives of our past overshadow our vision or even jeopardise the existence of humanity in the future?

Context / Significance

This paper explores The Lost Empires, an essay film developed in response to the Learning On Screen UK, Filmmaking and Copyright Law course held in late 2023 and early 2024. The paper explores the interplay between creative expression, research, ideas, and copyright law, emphasising the importance of adhering to academic and ethical standards in practice, research, and media dissemination when employing avant-garde methods in non-traditional academic contexts.

The Lost Empires is a place where nostalgia and solastalgia exist side by side (Denny 2024) alongside woven fragments of archival footage and ideas from Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx (Derrida, 1994) and Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism (Fisher, 2009), suggesting that society has arrived in Retromania (Reynolds, 2011) — a nostalgic place which has speculatively enabled populism, new nationalism, and Brexit to exist and thrive (Denny, 2024). The essay film also incorporates Jorge Luis Borges’s On Exactitude in Science (Borges and Hurley, 1999) and Alfred Korzybski’s ‘map is not the Territory’ dictum (Korzybski, 1933) to argue that archival maps do not fully represent the territory. In doing so, the film raises questions about the manipulation of historical narratives and the ideological control exerted by those who create and control such archives. This map–territory dichotomy reveals the inherent imperfections in our representations of reality. It has speculatively led to a contemporary society characterised by hyperreality, a condition where the distinctions between what is real and what is simulated blur, often due to media and technology (Baudrillard, 1994).

While the assertion may not be novel, The Lost Empires utilises the essay film format to demonstrate the critical potential both within and outside academia. It invites a broader audience to reconsider the construction of memories — real or imagined — and the implications for contemporary society, with all the data and memories ever experienced now being archived, accessed and reinvented in new contexts by both human and non-human entities.

In the IT industry, the reliance on archival storage and data management often receives conveniently selective attention. The environmental toll of maintaining vast infrastructures to store this information is considerable, contributing to energy consumption and pollution (Al Kez et al., 2022). This position raises concerns about whether the creation and consumption of archives are ultimately detrimental to modern societies, impacting not only the environment but also anxiety-induced collective mental health that continual self and public surveillance requires (Zuboff, 2019). Many citizens and decision-makers appear to overlook these consequences, prioritising short-term gains over non-sustainable daily practices.

The term ‘nostalgia’, derived from the Greek words nostos (return) and algos (pain), encapsulates the suffering associated with the longing to return to a place of origin (Hirsch, 1992) and was once regarded as a curable disease (Arnold-Forster, 2024). The commodification of nostalgia has evolved into an industry where materials and experiences are repackaged and marketed to evoke emotional responses from consumers. The slogan ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ exemplifies this trend, as discussed by Hatherley (2016).

This nostalgia has been transformed into a commercial product, a tool for propaganda, and sometimes a means for politicians to impose questionable changes by appealing to a longing for an imagined simpler or better time (Benzie and Poore, 2023).

In an era where constructed maps of collective memory often overshadow reality, nostalgia emerges as a powerful force that shapes societal narratives. The Lost Empires suggests that as empires rise and fall, new histories and memories emerge, particularly in the wake of revolutionary upheavals that involve the deliberate destruction of previous records and memories. In doing so, this curated version of history can be used to reinvent society through selective use and access (Denny, 2024).

This project, which examines memory construction and archival practices, as well as the ethical considerations surrounding the use of repurposed footage, also acknowledges its accessibility. It makes a significant effort to respect the original context of reused footage and materials, ensuring sensitivity towards the subjects portrayed. Integrating existing footage into the essay film demonstrates a comprehensive understanding of copyright laws, the identification of relevant rights holders and the laws under which the material has been accessed and re-imagined. This is not dissimilar to the integrity required within a traditional academic paper.

The ghosts of colonialism are intricately woven into the fabric of The Lost Empires, as they also permeate the very fabric of many contemporary societies. The observations and critiques are collated within the project as they engage with the legacies of past colonial power structures and their enduring effects on contemporary cultural identities, decision-making processes, and thought patterns. The spectral past blends with the emergence of new empires that have been formed and are being formed, not only as nation-states but also through global corporations that trade and control vast amounts of data. These new empires collaborate with the spectres of the old empires and facilitate the very making and dissemination of the essay film The Lost Empires, as well as most other aspects within contemporary consumer societies.

The project concludes with a haunting visit by the spectre of solastalgia (Albrecht et al., 2007) — the distress caused by environmental change — and reflects on the anxiety triggered by past pessimism aversion. It whispers that society’s reliance on consumption and detachment from reality has led to a speculative ‘sleepwalking’ toward its own demise.

Methods 

The Lost Empires employs qualitative methods that include and intertwine ethnographic, spectral ethnographic, and auto-ethnographic techniques.

Spectral ethnography, as defined by Armstrong (2010), engages with how past events continue to influence present conditions. These research approaches facilitate a nuanced examination of how sensory experiences shape contemporary society and spatial narratives.

By weaving together personal and collective memories and experiences with themes of hauntology and the intersecting theories and practices of psychogeography, the project moves, dances and staggers alongside the complex relationships between place, time, and memory.

Hauntology, a concept initially developed by Jacques Derrida (1994) and later expanded upon by Mark Fisher (2014), is a philosophical and sociological theory that examines, in part, the persistence of past ideologies and cultural norms in many contemporary societies.

Psychogeography is both a practice and a research method for uncovering hidden or forgotten stories within internal and external landscapes, pioneered by early practitioners such as Guy Debord (2024). Contemporary thinkers and practitioners, including Iain Sinclair (2009) and Rebecca Solnit (2022), have further developed the theories associated with walking. Through engagement with often invisible narratives while walking and exploring hauntological theories, films including Robinson in Ruins (Keiller, 2010) reveal how place influences perceptions of spaces and memories within much of the world in which society operates.

The evolving multi-modality of practice and theories, including hauntology (Brabazon, 2023) is manifesting and moving across various media—between academia, literature, music, film, and photography—and in doing so, explores the interplay of speculation, time, movement, chance, society, and memory within diverse disciplines with internal and external landscapes being reimagined discovered. Contemporary scholars, including Martyn Hudson (2018), Avery F. Gordon (2011), and Colin Sterling (2021), have investigated the relationships between spectres and materiality, suggesting that recognising haunting aids in comprehending overlooked realities and truths.

The use of essay film also serves as a distinctive methodology within The Lost Empires project, allowing for a practice-based creative exploration of complex ideas through a visual and auditory medium (Sourdis and de Lucas, 2019).This platform integrates personal narrative with critical reflection, engaging the audience in a dialogue that extends representation. By employing essay film, the project situates itself within a framework that values subjective experience and the exploration of abstract concepts, facilitating a rich interplay between form and content (Rascaroli, 2008).

Engaging with the fragmented framework of filmmakers such as Chris Marker and others1, The Lost Empires aligns with a lineage of creative exploration that interrogates identity, belonging, time, movement, and history through innovative cinematic techniques. The project’s cinematic references to Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929) serve to connect historical narratives with contemporary realities of imperial ambitions. Vertov’s work chronicles the emergence of the Soviet empire, using subjective performance and editing to encapsulate the socio-political transitions of its time. Other archival materials, including footage from seminal works like Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925), symbolise the cyclical nature of history and empires, as well as the narratives and spectres that return from them.

The narration in The Lost Empires operates nuancedly, teetering between a patriarchal colonial tone at times and then sacrificing clarity for poetic provocation, which may be regarded as coming from an unreliable narrator (Booth, 1961). This approach further demonstrates the film’s central thesis: the intricate relationship between perception and reality.

The soundtrack, alongside the original scores of the included footage, features tracks by Moby, including "Ghost Return" (2009), which lends The Lost Empires its ebbs and flows of melancholy. The soundtrack carries the characteristic crackle of vinyl records, a feature common in what is often described as hauntological music (Fisher, 2012). In doing so, the film creates an eerie, displaced sense of time and space.

Incorporating newly created film footage taken on an iPhone 6 midway through the essay film not only offers a pause by moving into a reading of Borges (1999) but also serves as a poignant counterpoint to the previous archival footage. It illustrates the different methods of ethnography and psychogeography operating within Cold War-era landscapes —Tallinn’s Linnahall (Karp, 1980)—and the use of a conceptual material installation in the form of a tent made from scraps of Soviet maps; this scene demonstrates a connection and engagement with narrative, culture and place by experiencing the territory and the spectral encounters from a lost empire.

The selection of found footage is curated, maintaining aesthetic integrity and ethical usage while adhering to copyright and intellectual property laws. Archival materials are employed not only as historical references but also to acknowledge their original context as tools of propaganda, reflecting biases that may now appear comical rather than fulfilling their intended purpose (Group IV Productions, c. 1967; U.S. Office of Civil Defense, 1951).

The editing process poetically assembles fragments, transforming chaos into a semi-ordered, almost linear construct by using Final Cut Pro. This project adopts a speculative, DIY cinematic aesthetic reminiscent of the fragmented styles found in automatic prose writing, early hip-hop sampling, and early punk cultures. By employing black-and-white film footage, The Lost Empires prompts questions about the project’s position in time.

Additionally, The Lost Empires draws editorial influence from works such as The Atomic Cafe (Loader, Rafferty & Rafferty, 1982), which uses Cold War propaganda footage, and Adam Curtis’s Russia 1985–1999: TraumaZone (2022), which collages propaganda and found footage from the Soviet Union. Both films repurpose archival material from earlier eras and empires to create new interpretations of historical events.

The mythical Kotzebue Kollective’s recognition in The Lost Empires titles of the film serves as a poignant reminder of the often-overlooked collaborative nature of creativity. This project underscores the significance of ethical citation practices in academia while also highlighting the often-overlooked authors who shape our everyday culture. Recognising the contributions of various individuals enriches the narrative surrounding the environments in which we move and operate and cultivates a deeper appreciation for collective intellectual labour, which we are all part of.

Outcomes

The Lost Empires makes a contribution to the ongoing exploration and understanding of memory and identity in various disciplines, as well as broader society. Through its semi-structured analysis of nostalgia and archival retrieval practices, the project not only enriches existing scholarship and debate but also invites further inquiry into the role that essay film and other mediums play in shaping our understanding of the past, present and potential futures.

One of the defining features of this work is its position within the Third Wave of hauntology (Newman 2022), which reflects a growing trend in creative practices that engage with ghost theory. The coexistence of these spectral narratives with present realities invites audiences to contemplate the complexities of memories and myth-making, which can be used as a catalyst for reimagining societal narratives shaped by chance, play, reflection, and design.

The essay film genre, as illustrated by The Lost Empires, holds significant relevance in an era plagued by misinformation and populism. By embracing the blurred boundaries of this particular interpretation of the essay film medium, the project encourages viewers to challenge their perceptions of reality, memory, archives, late capitalism and traditional academia.

The emergence of the American/European video essay movement, driven by scholars and teachers who challenge the traditional assumption that serious scholarship must solely take the form of written peer-reviewed essays and books, demonstrates the growing acceptance of this medium (MacDonald, 2022).

This slow shift, as outlined, encourages and engages a more diverse range of society in academic discourse, democratising access to knowledge and participation in knowledge building and sharing by embracing what may be considered invisible literacies.

The Lost Empires, in contributing to the discourse around the essay film genre, acknowledges that ‘most of the existing scholarly contributions acknowledge that the definition of the essay film is challenging, and suggest that it is a hybrid form’ (Rascaroli, 2009). The Lost Empires challenges the ways history and knowledge is perceived, stored, accessed, and represented and defines its place in the genre of essay film by filling the criteria ‘to interrogate the image, to dispel the illusion of its sovereignty’ (Tracy, 2013).

This ambition resonated with peers and broader audiences when the project has been presented and, in doing so, extended the dialogue about the essay film genre and its contribution to accessible knowledge and debate.

The Lost Empires project has been previously presented at conferences, engaging with panels, peers, and audiences from diverse backgrounds, disciplines, and nationalities in the UK, France, and Estonia in both essay film and oral presentation formats, followed by a Q&A session. These various platforms enable comprehensive engagement and critique from the audience. Additionally, the essay film has been screened at a short film festival in Estonia, as well as at university seminars and online, further encouraging academic discourse and peer reviews from an international audience across various disciplines. This project contributes to the existing archives, which are stored and disseminated, potentially also becoming part of the burden on our speculative futures.

References

Bibliography

Albrecht, G. (2005) ‘Solastalgia: a new concept in human health and identity’. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 359(1448), pp. 443–448.

Albrecht, G., Sartore, G.-M., Connor, L., Higginbotham, N., Freeman, S., Kelly, B., Stain, H., Tonna, A. and Pollard, G. (2007) ‘Solastalgia: The distress caused by environmental change’. Australasian Psychiatry, 15(S1), pp. S95– S98.

Al Kez, D., Foley, A.M., Laverty, D., Furszyfer Del Rio, D. and Sovacool, B., (2022) Exploring the sustainability challenges facing digitalization and internet data centers. Journal of Cleaner Production, 371, p.133633.

Armstrong, J. (2010) ‘On the possibility of spectral ethnography’, Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 10(3), pp. 243–250.

Arnold-Forster, A. (2024) Nostalgia: A History of a Dangerous Emotion. [Audiobook]. New York: Picador.

Baudrillard, J. (1994) Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by S.F. Glaser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Benzie, R. and Poore, B. (2023) ‘History plays in the twenty-first century: new tools for interpreting the contemporary performance of the past’, New Theatre Quarterly, pp. 385–406.

Brabazon, T. (2023) Know What You Do Not Know: Information Literacy for PhD Students [Audiobook]. Buffalo: Author's Republic.

Booth, W.C. (1961) The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Borges, J.L. (1999) ‘On exactitude in science’ in Collected Fictions. Editor and trans. A. Hurley. New York: Penguin.p.325.

Debord, G. (2024) The Society of the Spectacle. Translated by K. Knabb and F. Perlman. Oakland: PM Press.

Derrida, J. (1994) Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International. Translated by P. Kamuf. New York: Routledge.

Fisher, M. (2014) Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. Winchester : Zero Books.

Fisher, M. (2009) Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Winchester: Zero Books.

Gordon, A. F. (1997) Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Hatherley, O. (2017) Ministry of Nostalgia. London: Verso.

Hirsch, M. (1992) Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Hudson, M. (2018) Ghosts, landscapes and Social Memory. London: Routledge.

Korzybski, A. (1933) Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics. Lakeville, CT: International Non-Aristotelian Library Publishing Co. Available at: https://www.holybooks.com/wp-content/ uploads/Science-and-Sanity.pdf (Accessed: 20 May 2025).

McDonald, K. (2022) Film Theory: The Basics. New York: Routledge.

Newman, M. (2022) Hauntology Inside Out, Haunted Realism. London: Gagosian.

Rascaroli, L. (2008) ‘The essay film: Problems, definitions, textual commitments’. Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, 49(2), pp. 24– 47.

Reynolds, S. (2011) Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past. London: Faber and Faber.

Sinclair, I. (2009) London Orbital: A Walk Around the M25. London: Penguin Books.

Solnit, R. (2022) Wanderlust: A History of Walking. London: Granta Books.

Sourdis, C. and de Lucas, G. (2019) ‘The essay film as methodology for film theory and practice: Disruptions and expansions for film research’. Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, 17, pp. 80–96.

Sterling, C. (2021) ‘Becoming hauntologists: A new model for critical-creative heritage practice’. Heritage & Society, 14(1), pp. 67–86.

Tracy, A., 2013. The essay film. Sight & Sound, [online] August. Available at: https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/essay-film [Accessed 20 May 2025].

Zuboff, S. (2019) The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power[Audiobook]. New York: Hachette Audio.

Filmography

America in Turmoil (Group IV Productions, c. 1967, USA) Battleship Potemkin (S. Eisenstein, 1925, USSR)

The Lost Empires (R. Denny, 2024, Estonia)

Man with a Movie Camera (D. Vertov, 1929, Soviet Union) Robinson in Ruins (P. Keiller, 2010, UK)

Russia 1985–1999: TraumaZone (A. Curtis, 2022, UK)

Survival Under Atomic Attack (U.S. Office of Civil Defense, 1951, USA)

The Atomic Cafe (J. Loader, K. Rafferty, and P. Rafferty, 1982, USA)

Visuals

America in turmoil (Group IV Productions, 1967) Internet Archive. Available at: https://archive.org/details/201376_America_in_Turmoil (Accessed: 06 January 2024). Used under Pastiche & Parody - Section 30 (4) CDPA and Quotation - Section 30 (1ZA) CDPA.

Battleship Potemkin (S. Eisenstein, 1925, USSR) Free Film Heritage (2020) HD full-length movie - YouTube. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=m7h5WJs_00U (Accessed: 06 January 2024). Used under Pastiche & Parody - Section 30 (4) CDPA and Quotation - Section 30 (1ZA) CDPA.

Classic television commercials (1948-1969) (Various, 2002) Internet Archive. Available at: https://archive.org/details/ClassicT1948_8 (Accessed: 10 January 2024). Used under Pastiche & Parody - Section 30 (4) CDPA, Quotation - Section 30 (1ZA) CDPA, Open Licence and Criticism or Review - Section 30 (1) CDPA.

Harry S. Truman - The finest family in the world (US National Archives, 2009a) YouTube. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=a5IL87HOyeM (Accessed: 06 January 2024). Used under Pastiche & Parody - Section 30 (4) CDPA and Quotation - Section 30 (1ZA) CDPA.

Survival under atomic attack (U.S. Office of Civil Defense, 2002) Internet Archive. Available at: https://archive.org/details/Survival1951 (Accessed: 06 January 2024). Used under Pastiche & Parody - Section 30 (4) CDPA, Quotation - Section 30 (1ZA) CDPA and Open Licence.

Spies - Private Snafu (US National Archives, 2009b) YouTube. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws9L-Kifjkg (Accessed: 06 January 2024). Used under Pastiche & Parody - Section 30 (4) CDPA and Quotation - Section 30 (1ZA) CDPA.

The archives, 1940 (US National Archives, 2014) YouTube. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlYA7U0bp7k (Accessed: 06 January 2024). Used under Quotation - Section 30 (1ZA) CDPA and Open Licence.

President Kennedy speaks about Soviet threats to Berlin, 1961 (2015) DocsTeach. Available at: https://docsteach.org/documents/document/jfk- soviet-threat-berlin (Accessed: 11 January 2024). Used under Pastiche & Parody - Section 30 (4) CDPA, Quotation - Section 30 (1ZA) CDPA and Open Licence.

Architecture

Estonian Academy of Arts Building (KUU Architect Agency, 2018, Tallinn, Estonia). Appears incidentally in video content under Section 31, Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Linnahall (R. Karp, 1980, Tallinn, Estonia). Appears incidentally in video content under Section 31, Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Music

Ghost Return (Moby, 2009, USA). Available at: https://mobygratis.com [Accessed 17 May 2025]. Used under a non-commercial, non-exclusive licence agreement.

Stock Radio (Moby, 2009, USA). Available at: https://mobygratis.com [Accessed 17 May 2025]. Used under a non-commercial, non-exclusive licence agreement.

Texts

Texts narrated by Speechify, used under Fair Dealing - Section 32 (1A) CDPA.

Albrecht, G., Sartore, G.-M., Connor, L., Higginbotham, N., Freeman, S., Kelly, B., Stain, H., Tonna, A. and Pollard, G. (2007) ‘Solastalgia: The distress caused by environmental change’. Australasian Psychiatry, 15(S1), pp. S95– S98. Used under quotation. Criticism or review - Section 30 (1) CDPA and Quotation - Section 30 (1ZA) CDPA.

Borges, J.L. and Hurley, R. (1999) ‘On exactitude in science’. In: A. Hurley (ed.) Collected Fictions. New York: Penguin. Criticism or review - Section 30

(1) CDPA and Quotation - Section 30 (1ZA) CDPA.

Denny, R., 2024. The Lost Empires. Tallinn. Criticism or review - Section 30 (1) CDPA and Quotation - Section 30 (1ZA) CDPA.

Wildschut, T., Sedikides, C. and Routledge, C. (2008) ‘Nostalgia – From cowbells to the meaning of life’. The Psychologist [online]. Available from: https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/nostalgia-cowbells-meaning-life# [Accessed 11 January 2024]. Criticism or review - Section 30 (1) CDPA and Quotation - Section 30 (1ZA) CDPA.

Acknowledgements

The filmmaking and the copyright law course/ Learning On Screen UK and

Meletti, Bartolomeo, University of Glasgow, UK. 

Lehtma, Karolina, Estonian Academy of Arts, Estonia. 

Hudson, Dr Martyn, Northumbria University, UK. 

Stenbom, Dr Cecilia, Northumbria University, UK. 

Sendra, Dr Estrella, Kings College London, UK.

Peer Reviews

All reviews refer to the original research statement which has been edited in response to what follows

Review 1: Invite resubmission with major revisions of practical work and/or written statement

The work seeks to query the impact of the storage and commodification of the archive, via an assertion of a contemporary retromania and solastalgia which disrupts "our previously imagined utopian futures." To arrive here, the film takes an ambitious tour of ideas, beginning with a definition of nostalgia, and then moving through several distinct sections, alternating between archival voice, argumentative voiceover, and text (both on-screen and read). The central idea of The Lost Empires is a Borgesian premise that the (archival) map now precedes the territory and that this "speculatively" provides a fertile breeding ground for populism and ideological control by delineating and containing the range of possible futures. In itself, this is not a particularly new assertion (both solastalgia and retromania, for example, are features of Baudrillard’s "desert of the real", and nostalgia and its commodification are key ideas in a Jamesonian articulation of Late Capitalism), although the attempt to use essay film as a methodology (I would dispute its usage as a mere ‘platform’) does offer much critical potential to explore the subject matter. However, this is only partially realised here.   

The selection and use of film footage - shrewdly operating with a limited palette of content to provide the film with an aesthetic integrity - is thoughtful and softly playful throughout. The materials that retain the original archival voice, for example, serve a dual purpose, offering an expository function regarding the US archive itself, whilst also revealing their status as "selected and edited" propaganda materials. The film’s most intriguing (and most "essay film") sequence, in which self-shot images are used to engage Borges’ words in a semi-narrative poetic sequence, provides counterpoint and poignance to the archive materials that precede and follow; echoing Vertov and hinting at the hauntological resonances the filmmaker intended.   

The voiceover itself is dense, taking shortcuts as it leaps from signpost to signpost; in opting for density and a slightly arch, patrician grandiosity, the voiceover sacrifices argumentative clarity for poetic provocation. As an 'essay film’, such leaps and provocations are entirely viable, with the onus then placed on the writing to fill in the critical gaps and more rigorously show the route from idea to idea. However, the writing here is rather erratic from the outset (the central clause of the research question doesn’t properly scan), repeating rather than enriching the film’s argument, and presented with a fragmentary structure that reads at times as a list of loosely connected critical statements that don’t fully or rigorously.  

A whole medley of specific methodologies are mentioned, but it’s not clear in what ways The Lost Empires is engaging psychogeography or the various types of ethnography, or, crucially, how these manifest in the audiovisual methods the film is actually built from. Surprisingly, despite numerous references to different films and filmmakers, there’s also little effort to theorise the work as an ‘essay film’ in relation to scholarship in that area – via the works of Laura Rascaroli, for example. In some ways, particularly its short length, but also its use of on-screen text, split-screen and repurposed archive (and its deformation), The Lost Empires is perhaps more a ‘video essay’, and the filmmaker might thus consider framing the work in relation to the expanding corpus of writing on the practices of videographic criticism. Similarly, the film also has elements that are resonant within found footage documentary, notably Atomic Café (Rafferty and Loader, 1983), which repurposes very similar archive material, and further research in this area might also prove methodologically fruitful. 

Ultimately, whilst The Lost Empires demonstrates a laudable ambition and the film works well as a provocation into the subject matter, the writing and the wider intellectual framework behind the project need further consideration and clarification. 

Review 2: Accept submission subject to minor revisions of written statement

This video essay argues that privileged bias in nostalgia play a role in the imagining of the future. In doing so, it highlights the relationship between power, cartographies and memory, particularly in the context of imperialism. Images of Battleship Potemkin and President Kenney’s voice are creatively reused to convey the argument, which contribute to further questioning the value and authority attributed to (imperial) maps.  

The statement efficiently contextualises the work within ongoing doctoral research. There is an interesting point about the added layers of meaning through various creative techniques. There is coherence between the aesthetics and the argument, since there is a methodological effort to play and reinvent archives as a form of changing history or our perception of it.  

The specific argument and contribution to knowledge could however be emphasised, clarifying the contexts in which this argument on the empire may be relevant. It may also be a good idea to remind of the research question and to include a clarification in the statement of how the video attempts to answer it, providing an answer and inviting future directions of research.  

Solastalgia appears as a very intriguing term at the end of the video essay, but we wonder if perhaps this is too late, or if it could be further elaborated, at least in the statement, in relation to your key argument. Or is it an open end that is being sought here? If so, more could be said about that in the written statement.  

 
The work challenges the traditional role of archives and cultural memory in a provocative and intriguing way. The copyright aspects are addressed analytically in the ‘Footnotes’ but would benefit from some narrative in a dossier on Filmmaking and Copyright Law. The author relies on open licences as well as a variety of copyright exceptions, including parody and pastiche, quotation, and criticism and review. For each of these, they should use examples from their video essay to explain how they interpreted these notions as well as that of ‘fair dealing’, which underpins all three exceptions.  

All reviews refer to the original research statement which has been edited in response