2000s
Photography and video: what archives can help us distinguish
A cautious approach to visual culture from 1970 to 2009: separating what an image shows from what its medium, process and documentation allow us to claim.
Cinema and the ways audiences discovered films
Latest additions
Contemporary
A Film Can Be Studied Beyond the Screen
Archives, catalog records and documents help us investigate how cinema is preserved and described. They also reveal the limits of what can be claimed without returning to the film and its sources.
2000s
A Film’s History Is Also Found Beyond the Screen
Posters, catalogues and audiovisual records can document a film’s public life, but they cannot replace viewing the work or prove on their own how audiences received it. A critical guide to what each trace can—and cannot—establish.
2000s
A film is not cinema’s only document
Press archives and other materials associated with cinema can expand film history beyond the films themselves. What they can—and cannot—tell us depends on each collection and the available evidence.
Contemporary
What VHS Can—and Cannot—Tell Us in a Film Archive
The presence of VHS tapes in collections and archives makes it possible to study formats, documentation, and access. On its own, however, it does not show how a film was seen or valued on release, or how its reception changed with home video.
1990s
A film archive begins when someone decides what deserves to remain
Film museums and archives do more than preserve objects and films: they also select, describe and make different ways of remembering cinema accessible. Several Spanish and international initiatives offer a way to explore that work without mistaking preserved memory for a complete history.
1990s
Anime travelled farther than its definitions
Anime’s international circulation is not explained by its works alone. Definitions, scholarship and evidence of reception in different countries matter too.
2000s
Anime is not one style: it is also a way of producing and circulating animation
The available evidence describes anime as a diverse medium, connected to different techniques, audiences and distribution channels. This analysis distinguishes documented points from questions the sources cannot answer.
Contemporary
The Archive Is Not a Film’s End
Film preservation is not simply a matter of storing materials: the archive can also be a site of research, creation and debate about memory. A cautious reading of the cited discussions and publications distinguishes these possibilities without mistaking them for a complete history of Latin American cinema.
1990s
What a Film Archive Can Tell Us—and What We Shouldn’t Assume
Museums, film libraries and archives preserve different kinds of material and describe them using criteria that matter. Reading their sources carefully helps distinguish what is documented from what we still do not know about film history.
Contemporary
A Film Is Also What Remains Beyond the Screen
Film archives and cinema museums preserve films, but also the materials, documents and equipment that help explain how they were made, circulated and reached us. Spain’s planned Cinema Museum offers a starting point for thinking about this heritage as both material memory and public access.
1970s
History Does Not Simply Appear on Screen
Cinema can help us study the past, but it is not a transparent window: films are also stories shaped in particular moments and contexts. A careful reading distinguishes what they depict from what they can substantiate.
