“Reminds us that our cultural heritage is ever-vanishing and requires constant care just to survive.” Nicolas Rapold, New York Times

In a digital world where everything can be infinitely copied, replicated and disseminated online, why preserve film at all? This is the central question posed in Film, the Living Record of Our Memory.

Building on interviews by archivists, technicians, curators and filmmakers such as Costa-Gavras, Jonas Mekas, Patricio Guzmán, Ken Loach, Bill Morrison, Fernando Trueba and Wim Wenders, and appearances by Martin Scorsese, Barbara Rubin, Idrissa Ouédraogo, Ridley Scott, and Ousmane Sembene, the film attempts to answer that question.

This documentary is an inquisitive peek behind the curtain at the time-consuming and painstaking process that allows traditional film to remain viewable for modern audiences, including the challenges of transferring analogue physical film to digital formats. Preserved and maintained correctly, even films made at the dawn of the artform in 1890s are still accessible today, a window into a world long since gone. This film is a love letter to the work that goes on in making that a reality.

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