During my research journey to uncover the history of early cinema in the Balkans, I discovered that archival moving images resemble sensual vaults waiting to release collective memories and embodied imaginary of individuals, of communities, and of nations. Not merely documents or monuments to historical events or past moments, archival moving images are impregnated with collective and individual memories, which, in turn, shape and guide their reception and interpretation in the present time and affect the viewer. Henri Bergson argued that memory is embodied in the senses, and that the human brain processes many types of information not translated into thoughts before being experienced and embodied. On a number of occasions, I, the spectator, and I, the researcher, stood in front of the ‘affected’ or ‘affective’ object, drawn closer, in a state of metamorphosis. At these times, the present seemed to assume a form of historical rupture (Walter Benjamin), and, consequently, these moving images (fragments of films, disparate footage) became a key mode for a ‘historical awakening.’ In an effort to capture, to see further or deeper, to imagine, and to have something revealed, at times stubbornly hidden, I understood that the very process of seeing was deeply troubled and caught up in passions, and more akin to aesthesis (Greek ‘sense perception’).