Film Archives’ Values And Practices Based On Social Memory

The film is a kind of technology, a copy technology of material world, and a technology of information recording and playback. This is the theoretical basis of film as archive. In this paper, we study the film which can be used as archive-film is a kind of carrier, including film, magnet, and digit. We focus on the value of the information recorded on this special carrier. The key difference between film archive and paper archive is the differences of information symbol. The information symbol of film archive is the moving images, while the paper archive is the characters.Fiction film can become archive in a special sense, which is based on the mechanical copying properties of film. By luck more than design, the film copies the material world which reflects the mechanical copying properties of film. The fundamental basis is that fiction film can be used as historical documentary, which we can take advantage of to study policy, economy, culture, and teaching materials. But the most prominent feature is that the film is on behalf of the attitude in that era. Moreover, with other events, fiction film as historical fractions can constitute history.The key to join archive and documentary together is that documentary with archive not only is a medium of social memory, but also is a special medium in the form of files.Film is the place of official and folk memory melting, competing and compromising. It is not real that film archive depends on official film completely. Because there are a very few number of films produced for archive, and official films are not able to fulfill the requirement of the depth and the width of archive. Therefore, it is essential to incorporate commercial films, art films and home films into archives.FIAF is a collaborative association of the world’s leading film archives whose purpose has always been to ensure the heritage preservation. But there are no clear boundaries, which causes people to debate about its archival property. As one member of the association, China film archive is inevitably influenced by it and falls in contradiction. But film archive should not limit its utilization and service objects in the film industry and academic research, but should be based on the history recordings of the whole country and the heritage of social memory.