Toute la mémoire du monde, 1956

Documentary by Alain Resnais

Classic documentary about one of the most important libraries in the world, the Bibliotèque Nationale in Paris. In a unique style Resnais shows his love for this institute and how things worked when printed text was the norm for information.

The documentary Toute la mémoire du monde (All the Memory in the World), made by the influential and celebrated French filmmaker Alain Resnais in 1956, is an astounding tour of the institution before digitisation, when the world’s largest well of information wasn’t at our fingertips, but fastidiously collected and sorted behind library walls. Resnais focuses not only on the imposing scope of the library’s holdings, but also explores the vast enterprise of maintaining it for centuries to come, as well as the facility’s role as a bustling home for curiosity and enquiry.