         SOLETRAS, N. 27 (jan.-jun. 2014) ISSN: 2316-8838 DOI: 10.12957/soletras.2014.11121 Found footage and the gothic conventions Claudio Vescia Zanini 1 Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos Abstract: Social, historical, political and economic changes somehow are invariably reflected in the cultural and artistic manifestations of their time. In Gothic literature this is noticeable in elements such as medieval settings when they were more frequent (The Castle of Otranto), or the questionings regarding the creationist thought suggested in Frankenstein, materialized in The Origin of Species and revisited in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Dracula, works that also display the technicism and scientific advancements in the second phase of the Industrial Revolution. Nonetheless, one recurrent element in the literary Gothic convention regardless of its time is the claims to truthfulness, understood here as an effort to convince the reader/viewer that the story told indeed happened, as incredible as it seems. Therefore, this article verifies the ways in which the claims to truthfulness appear in found footage movies, observing how the classical Gothic characteristics are replicated or subverted in this subgenre of horror movies. The conclusion points out that convincing the reader/viewer that the story is real still is a priority in the Gothic agenda. The theoretical support comes from texts present in seminal companions to the Gothic (Hogle, 2002; Punter, 2006; Botting, 2004), from Jenkins (2009), through the notion of convergence culture, from Baudrillard (2002), through the notion of the three postmodern phantasies, and from Aufdenheide (2007), through the concept of claims to truthfulness. Key words: Gothic literature. Claims to truthfulness. Horror movies. Found footage. “We were struck with the fact, that in all the mass of material of which the record is composed, there is hardly one authentic document. [...] We could hardly ask any one, even did we wish to, to accept these as proofs of so wild a story”. These are words found in the last chapter in Dracula, a novel with several first-person narrators. The character who gets to put these words to paper is Jonathan Harker, the same character whose account opens the narrative in Bram Stoker’s novel, as he describes his trip to Transylvania to encounter a nobleman who wishes to purchase a house in London. The documents Harker refers to are diary entries that transcribed phonograph entries, telegrams, newspaper articles and a ship log. The chapter quoted in the beginning of this text is intended to be a sort of note to whoever has access to the story told in these documents. How potential readers are supposed to come 1 Professor de Língua Inglesa e respectivas literaturas da Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (UNISINOS), com atuação nos cursos de Letras e Relações Internacionais. Possui licenciatura em Letras – Inglês e Respectivas Literaturas (2001-2004), mestrado (2005-2007) e doutorado (2008-2011) em Literaturas de Língua Inglesa pela Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). É autor dos livros The orgy is over: phantasies, ake realities and the loss of boundaries in Chuck Palahniuk’s Haunted (2012); e Images of blood in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (2013). Integra o corpo editorial da revista Entrelinhas, da UNISINOS e é membro da Associação dos Professores de Inglês do Rio Grande do Sul (APIRS).