Abstract
This article studies Malayalam cinema’s engagement with its own history through the
medium and the production of affective archives. It endeavours to understand the use of
archival materials in cinema and explores the affective potential of films in the creation
of generative archives. Thus, the article studies select Malayalam films of the post-2000s
that employed ‘cinema within cinema’ and argues that through the tropes of the lost
heroine (Thirakkatha and Nayika), lost time (Vellaripravinte Changathi) and lost history
(Celluloid), these films explore the past through affective archiving. Further, it discusses
the archival recuperation of P. K. Rosy, the first heroine of Malayalam cinema, and
how the oppressed communities engage with archives in the present as a political and
aesthetic act for an emancipatory future. In short, the article examines the possibilities
of affective archiving within and outside cinema in interrogating dominant historical
narratives.