NATIONAL FILM ARCHIVE

National Film Archive: translation

(Filmoteka Narodowa).

Founded in 1955 as the Central Film Archive (Centralne Archiwum Filmowe, CAF), the National Film Archive in Warsaw is a mine of information for any film scholar dealing with Polish cinema. The archive's main task is to collect and preserve Polish and selected world films. The collection, one of the best in Europe, includes approximately fifteen thousand films, twenty-three thousand books, one thousand titles of film journals, and thousands of screenplays, film programs, film stills, and other archival materials. The archive also promotes film culture through irregular book and journal publications and by having close links with mass media, cine clubs, and other cultural institutions in Poland and abroad. For example, the archive organizes numerous film retrospectives in its cinema theater, Iluzjon. The archive is in part subsidized by the Polish Ministry of Culture through thePolish Film Institute.