Cinémémoire, founded in 2001, is a film archive of home movies and amateur films that collects, digitizes, indexes, archives, and promotes previously unseen films. Originally intended for distribution within a small, private circle, these amateur and home movies have now become archival documents that have found their place in the public and audiovisual sphere. Cinémémoire widely distributes these movies to the public to serve as a tool for memory, shared identity, and cultural transmission. Cinémémoire’s collections consist of footage produced by residents of Marseille and its surrounding region since the 1920s, which has since been collected and digitized by the association. The first collections of films, launched by the Circuit-Court association, began in 1997 with a call for films shot in the former French colonies, initiated by director Claude Bossion for the production of his film Mémoire d’Outremer. Following this call, 200 hours of film were collected, giving rise to Cinémémoire.

First, an introduction to the film archive fund and its three geografical spaces (Marseille, Provence region, and the former french colonies), followed by a demonstration of the website through a targeted search to showcase how the collections can be explored. This includes a presentation of our professional tools.
The pitch then focuses on the specific fund of films from former colonies, highlighting their importance in contemporary debates, as well as their central place within the archive’s holdings. Indeed Cinémémoire’s first preservation initiatives were largely built around the safeguarding of colonial and postcolonial audiovisual materials.
Finally, a live commentary of a selection of archival images and a short extract of a movie reusing our fund (Images, Passions, Histoire, Ahmed Zir, 2010), illustrating the richness and creative potential of the collection.

Mathias Schmitt

Mathias Schmitt is a graduate in European and Mediterranean Studies from Aix-Marseille University and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in contemporary history and colonialism at Paris Nanterre University. His work focuses on colonial urbanism, visual traces, memory and cultural cooperation. That lead him to conduct research in Rhodes and Rome (MAE). Alongside his studies, he has gained professional experience at Cinémémoire in Marseille, contributing to project development, archival work, and the organization of cultural events.

Margaux Basch

Margaux Basch is a documentary fimmaker. She graduated in Writing and Directing Documentaries in 2021 from L’INA (National Audiovisual Institute) in Paris. During her studies she worked with both the archive fund of Cinémémoire and the Rivesaltes Camp Memorial archives in order to produce a short movie about the exiles of the Algerian war. After this experience, she joined the team of Cinémémoire as part of the digitalization departement and as a contibutor in open call projects. She is also currently working on several documentaries focusing on connections between social media and politics.