Forgotten Treasures

It's a great time to be in the business of finding things. Found Magazine and foundmagazine.com have earned cult audiences just by being hip receptacles of cultural detritus, and YouTube has made icons of society's lamest and most pathetic personalities. Still, it helps to have a gatekeeper to sort through the muck. In that respect, Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett are the reigning curators of crap. The New York City duo's Found Footage Festival celebrates the soap scum of the VHS era: sexual-harassment tutorials, bizarre exercise videos, cat toilet-training flicks, '80s casualty animations, and other generational artifacts that should have been forgotten. They scour garage sales, thrift stores and trash bins to obtain their treasures, compiling all into a touring show with piquant commentary in the tradition of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Each celluloid guffaw begs one overriding question: "Who the hell thought of this?" The Found Footage Festival swings though Lawrence at 8 tonight at The Granada (1020 Massachusetts, 785-842-1390). Tickets cost $10 for the all-ages screenings.
Thu., April 2, 8 p.m., 2009