Editors of the volume:
Barbara Giza
Adam Wyżyński
Mateusz Drewniak
Film archives after the “archival turn”. A research reconnaissance.
“The archival turn” has led to an interest in archives, their academic valuation and a widening of their understanding, from a physical collection, collected and made accessible, to a metaphor for memory. The questions raised today, therefore, concern the archives as a place, but also as a center of practice in terms of concepts and strategies for dealing with the resources they hold. Within these strategies are procedures for, among other things, collecting, categorizing, valuing, cataloging, and sharing resources within the realities of a particular cultural, and social reality, which is also influenced by politics and economics, as well as – who knows if not to the most important extent – attitudes toward tradition and the past along with historical experiences.
The “archival turn” has also brought a new reality to film archives, both to archivists and researchers, revealing several consequences that must now and will have to be faced in the future. Archives are opening and films (as well as other film archives) are beginning to live a new life, which is also thought-provoking. In film studies, on the other hand, the “archival turn” led to the idea of a New Film History (nouvelle histoire), focused on source research aimed at proposing new scientific approaches in this field.
The year 2025 marks the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the Central Film Archive (now the National Film Archive - Audiovisual Institute, FINA) as an institution established to archive film and film-related collections. Today it is one of the largest European archives of this kind. This anniversary invites us to reflect on the consequences of the “archival turn” in the area of film archives and to consider the possible directions of their development and future role in the modern world. In this volume we would like to take up these considerations in a multidimensional and in-depth way, giving voice to both archivists themselves - employees of institutions dealing with audiovisual heritage, as well as film scholars and all other authors for whom the film archive is a workshop.
Proposals for thematic areas:
- film archives and audiovisual heritage in the conditions of the information society
- film archives as spaces of memory
- the influence of archives on the development and directions of the New Film History
-film museums, archives, film libraries
- the diversity of collections in film archives
- collection policies as the constitution of a particular archive
- the practice of the film archival profession - opportunities, challenges, dilemmas
- curatorial activities of film archives
- found footage
- technological processes in archives (digitization, restoration, preservation and forms of making archival collections accessible)
- ethics of dealing with film archives' resources
- copyright in the context of film archives
Finished articles should be sent by December 31, 2025, via our PRESSto website or to the email addresses of the volume's editors:
Barbara Giza: barbara.giza@fina.gov.pl or barbara.glebicka-giza@mail.umcs.pl
Adam Wyżyński: adam.wyzynski@fina.gov.pl
Mateusz Drewniak: mateusz.drewniak@amu.edu.pl or images@amu.edu.pl
Scheduled publication of the issue: second half of 2026.