From the beginning until 1945

Not having access to television, people living in the first half of the 20th century relied on documentary films screened in cinemas as their window on events around the world. Demand for reliable and animated sources of information was so great that dedicated cinemas started up specialized in the genre. Films screened here and all moving images made with a non-fiction purpose in mind are...

State-owned film production: 1945-1988

The film production balance sheet of these four, largely non-video decades verges on the chaotic. Starting from the 1960s, a growing number of companies, ministries and educational institutions increasingly used film techniques that were ever more easy to access in order to facilitate their work and document their operations. Thus today, the Film Archive is not only responsible for processing...

After the fall of socialism

The 1990s witnessed the emergence not only of political new directions but a mass of technological innovations as well. High definition video became increasingly available, in the course of which it progressively forced out the old celluloid technology. Parallel with this development, the production conditions of documentaries fundamentally changed. Today, documentary films are made in...