Albert Kahn, a philanthropist and banker with a commitment to humanity, dedicated his fortune to knowledge, progress and mutual understanding between societies. The musée départemental Albert-Kahn (Albert Kahn Museum) is home to the unique photographic and cinema collections stemming from his prolific work, including the Archives de la Planète, built up between 1909 and 1931, as well as a garden with a variety of internationally inspired landscapes. The museum’s collections, which remained relatively little known throughout the 20th century, are now open to the public on the property that once belonged to Albert Kahn in Boulogne-Billancourt. Visitors can discover a four-hectare site that has been completely remodeled, combining new buildings and restorations that respect the site’s remarkable history.
Just as Albert Kahn’s work encompassed a wide variety of studies of people and societies, the museum uses a multidisciplinary approach (history, photography, cinema, geography, ethnology etc.) to present its collections. It also hosts contemporary art initiatives, especially temporary exhibitions that complement the institution’s cultural agenda.
Today, the museum’s identity, based on the uniqueness and wealth of Kahn’s extraordinary endeavor, is multifaceted: a museum of images oriented toward social questions, with deep roots on a site that brings the whole world within reach.
The Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (National Center for Cinema and the Moving Image), created by law on October 25, 1946, is a public administrative establishment placed under the authority of the French Ministry of Culture. It ensures the coherent conception and implementation of state policy with respect to cinema and other arts and industries of the moving image, including audiovisual media, video and video games.
The CNC is also committed to the conservation and dissemination of film heritage through its vast collections, which it preserves, documents, restores and digitizes in collaboration with the films’ intellectual property owners. These collections cover the entire history of cinema, up to and including the latest productions collected through legal depository requirements. Works of fiction, research and documentaries, short and feature films, made in France and abroad and exhibited in France, can be discovered, studied and programmed through the CNC’s archives.
With more than 3,330 works that were exhibited in cinemas between 1908 and 1919, the CNC’s collections reflect the full aesthetic diversity of cinematic creation during that time period. Documentary production was particularly vibrant, revealing distant places, unusual animals, everyday life and exotic artistic practices. Fiction films from the era began to cover the variety of genres that delight audiences today, including detective films, dramas, comedies and adventure serials, while feature films became a central part of the filmgoing experience. The CNC’s archives contain essential milestones of this history that laid down the roots of today’s cinema.
In 1936, Henri Langlois, a unique, visionary figure, founded the Cinémathèque française in order to save films from destruction, along with costumes, sets, posters and other treasures from the world of cinema. He was the first to consider cinema as an art to be preserved, restored and exhibited.
Now housed in a modern building designed by the architect Frank O. Gehry, the Cinémathèque continues to showcase the wonders of cinema through its wide range of activities and its extensive collection, one of the world’s largest. It regularly restores films and revisits cinema from every era, origin and genre.
The Cinémathèque gives its broad audience access to four cinemas, exhibitions, a museum dedicated to Georges Méliès that opened in 2021, meetings with film professionals, activities for young audiences, a film library, a bookshop and, every Wednesday, a film from its collections or elsewhere released on its VOD platform, Henri.
At the Cinémathèque’s library, patrons can consult resources on world cinema from its origins to the present day. These collections, which are continually being enriched, inventoried and processed, include books, magazines, set models, posters, photographs, and archival material (some of which is digitized), and are accessible to all.
The Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris (Historical Library of the City of Paris) is one of the city’s specialized public libraries. It was founded in 1871 and has been housed in the Hôtel Lamoignon, a late 16th century buidling, since 1969. It is freely accessible to the public.
Its collections of books and magazines, manuscripts, maps, photographs, drawings, prints, posters, postcards and ephemera reflect the history of Paris and the Île-de-France region, mainly covering the 19th and 20th centuries. The BHVP is also a center for resources related to literature (Michelet, Sand, Apollinaire, Cocteau), for the history of theater and performance art in Paris (particularly thanks to donations from the Association de la régie théâtrale) and for the history of feminism (Marie-Louise Bouglé, Edmée de La Rochefoucauld).
The BHVP’s collection of material related to cinema is quite rich as a result of its librarians’ early interest in the moving image and the daily life of Parisians. At the beginning of the 20th century, the library collected documents produced by cinemas in Paris and its suburbs, including admission tickets, subscription cards and programs. For the period from 1908 to 1919, 159 cinemas located throughout the city are represented in the collection.
The BHVP also maintains a small collection of film posters from the era, with subjects including life in Paris and World War One.
The Établissement de communication et de production audiovisuelle de la Défense (Defense Communication and Audiovisual Production Institution, ECPAD), is a leading archive and audiovisual production center overseen by the French Ministry of Armed Forces. It houses exceptional audiovisual and photographic archives that bear witness to more than one hundred years of history, from the First World War to Operation Barkhane (in the Sahel and the Sahara since 2014). The archive includes over 15 million photos and 100,000 hours of film.
The exceptional archives dating from the First World War, one of ECPAD’s most significant collections, have contributed to shaping our current knowledge of the conflict. These images were produced by the French army’s photographic corps (SPA) and cinematic corps (SCA), which were active starting in the spring of 1915.
Until January 1917, the film collection of over 2,000 titles was created for the country’s major film companies (Éclair, Éclipse, Gaumont, Pathé), which exhibited the content in their theaters. The ECAPD also houses rushes as well as weekly newsreels, the Annales de la guerre, produced beginning in 1917 and distributed by the Ministry of War. A collection of about 100 films specially created for the army’s medical corps documents advances in medical science that benefited servicemen.
ECPAD plays a vital cultural role, bringing its collections to the public by publishing books, co-producing films, creating exhibits and participating in festivals. The institution also participates in education and research, providing resources for students and teachers, as well as hosting a training center, the École des métiers de l’image (EMI).
La Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), ainsi dénommée depuis 1994, est la bibliothèque nationale de la République française. Héritière des collections royales constituées depuis la fin du Moyen Âge, elle couvre tous les champs de la connaissance et a notamment pour mission la collecte du dépôt légal.
Le département des Arts du spectacle trouve son origine en 1920 dans le don fait à l’État par Auguste Rondel (1858-1934) de l’exceptionnelle collection qu’il a constituée sur les arts du spectacle, à travers toutes les époques et tous les pays. Ce don se complète, depuis la création du département en 1976, de nombreuses acquisitions et dons couvrant toutes les expressions du spectacle vivant : théâtre, cirque, danse, marionnettes, mime, cabaret, music-hall, spectacles de rue… ainsi que le cinéma, la télévision et la radio. Ceux-ci incluent toutes les typologies de document produits avant, pendant et après la représentation : manuscrits de textes, correspondance, maquettes, éléments de décor, costumes et objets, photographies, documents audiovisuels, affiches, dessins et estampes, programmes et coupures de presse… ainsi que des livres et des revues. En outre, le département conserve de nombreux fonds d’archives et collections de personnalités et de structures (salles de spectacle, festivals, compagnies…).
Le cinéma des premiers temps y est particulièrement bien représenté, celui-ci étant à l’origine un spectacle majoritairement forain, ce qui intéresse Rondel. Il se fixe alors comme objectif d’observer les formes émergentes mêlant spectacle et technique et crée durant l’entre-deux guerre une section cinématographique au sein de sa bibliothèque. Il forge ainsi des recueils de critiques de films, collecte des ciné-romans, scénarios, journaux cinématographiques… Ce socle des collections cinématographiques est inventorié sous la cote RK. Les collections se sont ensuite enrichies avec l’arrivée des fonds d’archives de René Clair, Abel Gance, Jean Grémillon, Marcel L’Herbier, Léon Moussinac, Marc Allégret, Gaumont, Pathé… Aujourd’hui, le département des Arts du spectacle se limite à la période d’avant 1945, et conserve environ six cent mille documents sur le cinéma (sur un total de près de quatre millions de documents et objets).
Créée en 2003, GP archives, filiale du groupe Gaumont, société pionnière de l’industrie cinématographique, conserve, restaure et exploite les catalogues d’archives d’actualités filmées. Forte d’une collection de 14.000 heures d’images animées de 1895 à nos jours conservées sur support pellicule 35 millimètres, GP archives est référencée comme la première cinémathèque d’actualités en Europe.
GP archives valorise et donne à voir des actualités cinématographiques et documentaires aux sujets extrêmement variés constitués au fil des années par les rédacteurs en chef de la presse filmée. Les sujets non retenus dans les choix éditoriaux et les chutes ont également été précieusement conservés. Soit des milliers d’heures d’images incontournables sur les sujets de société : politique, culture, sport, environnement, sciences et techniques, mode et cinéma.
Dans le cadre de sa politique de conservation du patrimoine, GP archives a engagé dès 2014 la numérisation de ses collections en 2K et 4K à partir des éléments originaux. Les collections d’archives filmées conservées offrent un choix exceptionnel de documents cinématographiques retraçant l’histoire du XXème siècle et, grâce à une politique d’acquisition ou de commercialisation, l’actualité du XXIème siècle.
Gaumont a par ailleurs, depuis de nombreuses années, confié à GP archives son catalogue de films de fiction muets. GP archives met ainsi tout en œuvre pour conserver, valoriser et diffuser ce patrimoine cinématographique prestigieux d’œuvres de fiction produites de 1896 à 1929.
