Das Archiv lebt!

Archive– a word that conjures quick associations: dusty, forgotten, old. How wrong! Instead of dry relics, colorful film cans are stored here – neatly stacked, adorned with carefully designed labels, systematic, aesthetic, functional. The shelves grow year after year, ready to burst at the seams. Film posters change on the walls as if by invisible hand, and the air carries the exciting scent of gripping movies (it’s slightly acidic), thirsting for the big screen. Here cinema slumbers – raw, analog, and untamed. Humor and pathos, trash and arthouse, clarity and obscurity, all side by side here. It is a place of cinematic condensation, a treasure chamber of collective film dreams. Time, then, to surrender to the spirits of celluloid – time to bring them into the light.

Because what is preserved here is nothing less than our own cinematic DNA: grown from donations, trades, rescues, discoveries, collected from every corner of the film world, with passion, taste, and a great deal of dedication. Since we discovered our first 35mm print in 2017 – a Czech western with Italian subtitles – we have been committed to the idea of not merely archiving analog cinema, but keeping it alive: through screenings, as long as the material allows, before it vanishes for good. Because “films don’t live in the archive, but in the moment of projection.” With every screening, we also show short films from 30 years of HfG film history.