MUSEALIZATION AND TERRITORIES OF CINEMATOGRAPHIC HERITAGE

Abstract

The evolution of safeguarding institutions highlights the need to rethink the boundaries of cinematic memory. This work, the result of ongoing research, investigates the typology of cinematheques and the musealization process of cinematographic heritage. These elements are represented by the territory of old street cinemas and the biform institutions that are the cinematheques, with their archival and museological collections; by the public that encounters the cinematic experience and social memory; and by the heritage (material and immaterial). The objective of this text is to analyze, through the lens of Sociomuseology, the musealization process of cinematographic heritage from this expanded perspective. It is argued that these components, upon entering the museal field, are stripped of their primary utilitarian function to become cultural assets bearing value (objects-becoming). Methodologically, the study is supported by a conceptual review that articulates the material dimension (mobile and immobile) and the immaterial dimension (affects and cinephilia) of filmmaking. It is concluded that the cinematheque reaches its fullness when understood essentially as a multiple institution—archive, museum, and school—whose role goes beyond mere technical conservation, acting in the continuous reactivation of spatial and social relationships and consolidating cinema as an active territory of social memory.