Raymond Borde
Raymond Borde was the founder of the Cinémathèque de Toulouse. Film critic for Les Temps modernes (1954-1961), member of the editorial board of Positif (1954-1967), then of Cahiers de la cinémathèque (from the 1970s) and of Archives (created in 1986), he published numerous books on cinema, reflecting the wide variety of his personal interests (burlesque, animation, film noir, social cinema...). Close to the surrealist movement, a member of the Communist Party (he was excluded in 1958 following the publication of an article on "The End of Stalinism"), an anti-colonialist activist (he opposed the Algerian War and signed the Manifesto of the 121 in 1960 on the right to insubordination), he was a supporter of politically-committed cinema.
A leader of the Ciné-Club de Toulouse in the 1950s, Raymond Borde officially founded the Cinémathèque de Toulouse in February 1964. It joined the FIAF the following year, which marked the end of relations between Raymond Borde and Henri Langlois, the founder of the Cinémathèque française, who had broken off with the FIAF in the early 1960s.
Curator (1964-1981) then President (1982-1990) of the Cinémathèque de Toulouse, he also played an important role in the global film archive community for a quarter of a century, as a continuous member of the FIAF Executive Committee from 1966 to 1991 (he occupied the posts of Vice-President, Secretary-General, and Treasurer of the Federation). He also published one of the most comprehensive books on the first fifty years of the film archive movement, Les Cinémathèques, in 1983. He was elected FIAF Honorary Member during the 1998 FIAF Congress in Prague.
Borde, Raymond, Les Cinémathèques, L’Âge d’Homme, 1983
Borde, Raymond & Buache, Freddy, La Crise des cinémathèques et du monde, L’Âge d’Homme, 1997
Daudelin, Robert & Bowser, Eileen, "Raymond Borde", Journal of Film Preservation, Issue 68, December 2004, pp.66-69
Gauthier, Christophe & Laurent, Natacha, Raymond Borde, une autre histoire du cinéma, Toulouse: Editions Privat, 2022
Web-documentary on Raymond Borde (in French), Cinémathèque de Toulouse
