THE ARCHIVIST

History.
Told Like Cinema.

We make documentaries about the past and publish the evidence they rest on — the sources, the licences, the material we refused to use, and the questions the record cannot answer.

Enter the library

Rano Raraku · Dennis G. Jarvis · CC BY-SA 2.0

The latest film

The Island That Was Blamed

The island was transformed by its people. The people were destroyed by someone else.

Documentary · 16:12

Read the evidence →

Also published as a complete ebook and audiobook edition — £2.50, one product →

All films →   Collections →

The Archivist Books

The films are the fifteen per cent.

Every documentary leaves research behind; the books are the rest of it — the registers, the contested dates, the sources we read and the ones we refused.

The Archivist Books →

Every film shows its workings

Counted from the catalogue this site is built from, at the moment the page was built. None of these figures is typed by hand.

  • 19

    films published

  • 11

    photographs cleared individually

  • 6

    permanent catalogue pages

  • 6

    questions published unresolved

The sources

Each claim traced to a record you can go and read yourself.

The rights

Every image cleared individually, with its licence and origin stated.

The gaps

Where the evidence stops, we say so — on the film and on the page.

Anyone can claim to be careful.
We would rather you checked.

How we verify a source →