The flicker of black-and-white film reels danced across Samantha Close’s living room wall, a rhythmic pulse echoing from her speakers as she spliced together fragments of the past. What began as a playful dive into the Internet Archive’s treasure trove transformed into “The Archive Boogie,” a film remix that clinched second place in the 2025 Public Domain Day Film Remix Contest.

“Thank you! It feels amazing—I was completely shocked to hear that I’d won second place,” Close said, her excitement as infectious as the energy of her film.

Set to the jaunty tones of “Everybody Two-Step” (1912), “The Archive Boogie” whisks viewers back to 1929, a pivotal year in cinema history. Close’s remix stitches together iconic scenes, from the groundbreaking musical “Hallelujah,” featuring an all-Black cast, to “St. Louis Blues,” starring musical pioneer Bessie Smith and the animated antics of “The Skeleton Dance.” She also included footage from the “Cocoanuts” and “Silly Symphony” cartoons, showcasing the breadth of 1929’s cinematic output. The result? A lively, danceable homage to a bygone era.

“1929 is the latest year that material could have been released and still definitely be in the public domain—as of January 1, 2025, that is. I wanted to celebrate its new status,” Close explained.

But why a boogie?

“Playful energy is a great way to put it,” she laughed. “I really wanted to create something danceable, if in an old-timey way, that would make people laugh as much as smile.”

Close’s background in fan vidding and anime music videos shines through in her editing style. 

“I learned editing almost wholly from watching fan videos—that is, vids and anime music videos. Dance vids and AMVs taught me how to cut on the beat and match the intensity of a piece of music, both with the frequency of cutting and with how much motion was going on inside the clip,” she said. This influence is evident in her seamless transitions and animated stills, like the whimsical Life magazine cover featuring a polar bear.

Selecting the right footage wasn’t just about what fit visually—it was about rhythm and story. 

“I picked the music first, so I knew that I would have to match a song that was about dancing—that led my selections quite a bit,” Close said. “I wanted to have a mix of different types of dancing, from big Hollywood stage productions to just regular people from old home movies. I also wanted to feature some of the iconic material, like the ‘Skeleton Dance’ cartoon, the Cocoanuts and the Hallelujah musical, that came from 1929.”

Experimentation played a big role in the process. 

“Ho boy, did I!” Close said. “I like to tell a bit of a story, even in the middle of a video that is mostly about dancing and having fun. I played around with a few different ways to incorporate the ‘nobody oughta care’ lines before finally settling on using Charlie Chaplin’s film Police (1916) to set up a little story where a police officer pursues Chaplin throughout the video.”

Technical challenges abounded, particularly with aspect ratios. “The biggest challenge was figuring out how to deal with the aspect ratios, i.e., how tall and wide the footage is. Today’s screens are largely widescreen 16:9, but older footage was shot with a variety of aspect ratios, none of which are 16:9. I had originally wanted to gradually build up to the big multi-screen sequence at the end, doing more and more split-screen throughout, but it drew too much attention to the mismatch between the single-screen footage (mainly 4:3) and the multi-screen sequences (the full 16:9),” Close explained.

Despite these hurdles, Close found joy in the process, crediting the Internet Archive for its invaluable resources. 

“This video wouldn’t exist without the Internet Archive. Having an annotated repository of footage to go through in the first place is particularly essential when you want to do a video like ‘The Archive Boogie’ that has footage from so many different works. I started off at a very basic place—just typing in ‘dance’ and limiting the results to 1929. Then I started going in for very specific lyric matches, again going back and forth from keyword searches to scanning the footage itself,” she said.

Her work extends beyond just this remix. As a professor, Close engages in “videographic criticism,” blending scholarly analysis with remix techniques. 

“I practice what’s called ‘videographic criticism,’ a scholarly form of remix video that performs media criticism by working directly with footage rather than just writing about it. My practice is particularly informed by fan video, like I mentioned earlier, so this is the first time I’ve really overlapped with the classical cinema that many of my colleagues focus their work on.”

The film’s cohesive flow, despite its varied sources, is tied together by music. “The music really ties everything together. Another aspect that I take from fan vidding and AMV editing tradition is doing direct ‘lyric matches,’ where whatever is said in the lyrics is also on-screen. (The ‘like a polar bear’ sections were the most challenging in that regard!) I think that lyric matching ties the footage together, even though it’s from so many different sources,” she said.

Looking ahead, Close has her sights set on more archival projects, with a particular interest in Sherlock Holmes adaptations. 

“I’m a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes, so I’ve been thinking about doing a video cutting together Sherlockian adaptations from across history and the world. Stay tuned!” she said. “As a character, he’s in the public domain, but many of the adaptations audiences are familiar with today won’t be there for a very long time. Yet, that audience familiarity is a big reason why artists would want to work with the footage.”

But for now, “The Archive Boogie” stands as a testament to the power of remix culture and the timeless charm of 1929’s cinematic gems. 

“I hope it gives [viewers] some joy (maybe even a few minutes of dancing!) and inspires them to check out the Internet Archive and the wealth of different kinds of footage, music, and images available there,” Close said.

And as the last frame flickers off the screen, it’s clear—the past still knows how to groove.