Abstract
The Videotheque de Paris, a moving image archive of the French capital, opened in 1988 in the Forum des Halles, site of the city’s former central food markets. This article analyzes the institution’s placement in this new development, its adoption of new technologies, and its engagement with discussions of history and memory. It argues that the Videotheque’s formation and first years epitomized the play with historical time that defined Paris in the 1970s and 1980s: a simultaneous investment in the past as the bedrock of the capital’s identity and a self-conscious futurism. When the city tore down the Baltard pavilions, it made way for a proliferation of historical reenactments at the city’s heart that culminated in the opening of the Videotheque. Promoted as the city’s “living memory,” the institution placed 2,500 documents from almost a century of Parisian film, television, and advertising at visitors’ disposal at high-tech viewing stations. Videotheque staff employed the most up-to-date audiovisual and...
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