Media Fields Journal, Issue 19: Archival Elements
In 2008, the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) released its 70th anniversary manifesto reaffirming film’s status as the “optimal archival storage” of the moving image. “Don’t throw film away!” they urged, for unlike its digital successors, film elements tangibly embody traces of their own material history alongside a bygone cultural heritage. “No matter what technologies may emerge,” they write, existing film elements “connect us to the certainties of the past.”