The main objective of the Filmoteca de Catalunya is to recover, preserve, restore, catalogue and disseminate our cinematographic, film and documentary heritage.
To fulfil this function, the Filmoteca has a number of areas and facilities designed to guarantee the stability of its collections both in the Biblioteca del Cinema and the Centre de Conservació i Restauració. These facilities are equipped with special temperature and humidity control systems to optimise the preservation of the materials (films on different media, paper documents – books, magazines, scripts, etc. – posters, photographs, and more, as well as cinematographic equipment).
The preservation of the collections complies with the standards laid down by international organisations specialising in this field. The Filmoteca is equipping itself with the appliances, technologies and tools commensurate with the specific requirements of the medium of film, and also adapts to the diversity of devices, documents, systems, supports and emulsions that the film industry has used over the years in order to transmit our cinematographic heritage to future generations.
The preservation of our film heritage has two aspects. The first is active preservation, which entails reviewing and inspecting all the films and other documents to assess their technical characteristics and condition, and to be able to make the relevant interventions to upgrade, consolidate, clean or apply any other treatment that the material requires. Meanwhile, passive preservation is based on providing the facilities with the optimum temperature, humidity and air renewal systems in order to minimise the impact of time on the collections as well as trying to minimise natural or human risks implementing redundant fire-fighting and intruder control systems.