Carlo Montanaro's 'Fabbrica del Vedere' Archive in Venice Preserves Cinema History

The Archivio Carlo Montanaro, also known as La Fabbrica del Vedere, is a vast collection in Venice dedicated to the history of vision, from pre-cinema to digital. Founded by Carlo Montanaro, a prominent Italian film scholar and former director of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia, the archive houses 700 vision machines (camera obscuras, stereoscopes, magic lanterns), over 30,000 photographs (many rare incunabula), 15,000 film titles (especially early, animation, and avant-garde), 7,000 volumes, and numerous engravings including Canaletto's Prato della Valle. Montanaro also manages the Fondo Francesco Pasinetti, organizes exhibitions, workshops, seminars, and publishes the journal All'Archimede. His passion began as a child watching Snow White, and he emphasizes the role of common people in cinema's evolution, citing Étienne-Gaspard Robertson's 18th-century phantasmagoria. Montanaro views the archive as a museum of everyday craftsmanship, often overlooked by official culture. He worries about the ease of digital image-making but insists on preserving the collective experience of projected images. The collection is accessible both analog and digital at the archive's venue in Venice.