A living archive about the transmission of love for film

Z-A Filmmakers’ Archive is a documentation and study centre focusing on the poetics of film, or in other words, on the theorisation of cinematographic practice, on how the profession and the talent of making and watching movies has been communicated, taught, transmitted and shared. Z-A is not, therefore, an archive of films, but rather an archive of the thoughts and theories of filmmakers.

The Z-A collection encompasses the framework of systematic, academic and institutional teaching. It also encompasses the manifestations of cinematographic transmission that arise from intuition, social need, political urgency or the creative impulse of filmmakers as a continuity and expansion of the film itself. In this last case, film transmission is understood as a creative-cinematographic practice in and of itself.

Filmmakers’ Archive is built around the foundational collection of the Lost lessons of Andrei Tarkovsky. It is principally an archive, a repository of content and collections. In parallel, Z-A also has the aim of generating its own contents, some of which will stem from EQZE's activities and from its process of fostering reflection and research through seminars, publications and the programming of public screenings.

The collections and materials will be accessible from the consultation points established by Medialab, which will also dedicate a specific area, clearly-identified as the Filmmakers’ Archive area, in which academics, guest lecturers and researchers can carry out their work. Researchers will be advised by experts working at Medialab and the EQZE Research Department. All the material in the collection will be digitised. Z-A is not designed to be a physical archive. Z-A will have a website that will enable interested parties to explore the collection and will provide access to specific contents.

As a public archive on film education, Z-A aims to be a permanent, open-access, free film school available to all citizens: a huge memory of film transmission. Given the exclusive nature of some of the materials, we hope also to attract specialist users, researchers and academics who are immersed in the study of specific contents, pedagogy and the poetics of film.

Z-A Filmmakers’ Archive will open in 2023.