The museum researches, digitizes and popularizes films and video works made in the 20th and 21st centuries. Films are selected for the archives for their aesthetic value, but also their documentary and sociological value. These are primarily works by visual artists—experimental and animated films, documentation of on-camera performances, and unique recordings of happenings. The archives also include home movies shot on 8 mm and 16 mm film, and works by members of workplace amateur film clubs from the communist era in Poland. Important and emotionally engaging works are often created outside of artistic or film production institutions, which accounts for the blurring of boundaries between genres, and between professional and amateur works, in the film collections of MSN Warsaw. The museum’s film archives are repositories of digital files acquired from the creators or their heirs under non-exclusive licenses.
