The first part of this paper traces how analog film and filmic abstraction were entangled across changing media historical environments. I will argue that in films by John and James Whitney, Hy Hirsh, Harry Smith, and Stan Brakhage engagement with the material properties of analog film simultaneously evokes imaginaries of the digital, undermining rigid distinctions between the two fields. In the second part of my presentation I will focus on recent analog abstractions by filmmakers such as Jennifer Reeves and Tomonari Nishikawa to consider the role of the analog in the present digital culture.