Blog written by Jan-Christopher Horak, director, UCLA Film & Television Archive,
      
The first generation of film archivists were essentially collectors interested in showing their treasures. Before the age of television, old films were virtually impossible to see, since producers had little interest in saving material that had outlived its economic usefulness. Furthermore, mainstream cultural institutions and governments considered the cinema a crass commercial enterprise, a form of communication not worthy of serious intellectual consideration. Having what Roland Barthes has called "bad object status", the cinema was mistreated by governments, institutions of education, and commercial interests, alike. 

In the 1920s, a minority of intellectuals began championing the cinema as a new art form, advocating the creation of non-commercial screening spaces and the establishment of archives...