A faster way to find—and verify—historical footage.
PastTrace is an independent discovery engine for filmmakers, researchers, journalists, educators, historians, and creators.
The problem
Archival films are scattered across institutions, described inconsistently, and often too long to scan manually. PastTrace joins discovery with visible evidence and, where appropriate, indexes films at the shot level.
Independent by design
PastTrace is not affiliated with or endorsed by the archives it indexes. Source institutions remain authoritative.