History in the Backstage of Romanian Television Archives

Abstract

The historical value of audiovisual archives lies as much in the documented collection they have to offer as in the losses that history has imprinted on them. Controversial material that has been confiscated by the secret police in communist Romania or records of programmes that have been destroyed due to economizing practices of ‘taking the silver out of the pellicle’ are important facts in the history of Romanian television. Equally important for history is the ‘leftover’ material filmed during the Romanian revolution, which now lives in the shadow of the screened footage. Pursuing the life story of an archival institution and understanding its relations with history forms an important preliminary step for the historian in assessing the documented history within the archive.