NO-DO: Archivo y secuestro de la imaginación

In 2012 the Spanish public television corporation (RTVE) and the Filmoteca Espa-ñola presented the digitalization of the NO-DO newsreel, a public audiovisual heri-tage that is key to understand how the Franco dictatorship controlled the imaginary of the Spanish population. Until now this archive was accessible only in a physical location, and its use (both commercial and non-commercial) highly restricted.The digitalization of the archive seemed to indicate a will to open the archive towards a more democratic understanding of the “public audiovisual”. But the fact that the material can only be accessed through streaming but not downloaded for creative use raises a series of questions about the power relationship between digital public archives and political imaginaries. In this paper I suggest the need to rethink the archive as an “instituting” entity that should be open to the creative use of ci-tizens, rather than become an “instituted” audiovisual cemetery.