'Memory and trust in a time of un-framing the cinema heritage'

Abstract

I argue that film archives in their endeavors to match the demand for immediate access stand to lose their unique position as both keepers of cinema’s heritage and authoritative centers of film historical expertise. By providing access to their holdings yet withholding their knowledge archives deprive their users and customers of the signifying contexts with which to answer the implicit question every time they encounter an archival artefact, “What is it that I’m looking at and/or listening to?” Following the ‘career’ of one film as a case study I demonstrate how a number of considerations and circumstances have determined the choices made with regard to this film’s material, institutional, and social manifestations, both before—the film and the collection it is part of went through two invasive revisions during the years it was in distribution—and after it entered the archive.