This essay explores the notion of the experimental film “remake” and the different spectatorial experiences that arise in watching a canonical experimental film and its digital remake. By examining A Movie by Jen Proctor and Man with a Movie Camera: The Global Remake in relation to their originals, this essay reflects on the different effects produced by these films made in the cinematic and digital eras, respectively, as a result of the different archives of documents available for appropriation and recontextualization at each historical moment. Indeed, I suggest that the original films produce a “material archive effect” while the remakes produce a “digital archive effect,” these effects occurring at the levels of both form and content. I argue that these films offer a point of entry for thinking about how cinematic and digital technologies have each differentially shaped human experience of the “real” as its representation is appropriated and recontextualized.