Steps are being taken by the Department of Information to preserve a treasure trove of newsreels and other footage dating back to the 1960s and 1970s.
DOI director Emanuel Abela said the films included the St Paul's centenary celebrations in 1960 and the Blessed Gorg Preca's funeral in July 1962.
Others include the consecration of Archbishop Emeritus Joseph Mercieca, former Prime Minister Dom Mintoff's meeting with former Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi and one titled "CIA-Libya talks", which has yet to be seen to determine what it is about.
However, only half of the 2,000 films in the DOI's possession are in labelled cans. The remainder are either loose or not labelled.
Mr Abela said that when TVM started operations late in 1962, the footage accompanying news items used to be shot by the DOI, which set up a film section between 1958 and 1960. Up to 1979 the section only covered government activities, though there are items of general interest like the Vulcan air crash in Zabbar in 1975.
The DOI had developed a film and video section in the mid-1970s but once TVM equipped itself with its own cameras and filming staff, the section was closed down.
One of the last pieces of footage shot was the closure of the British military base in Malta.
Mr Abela said attempts by the DOI to embark on joint projects to restore the films with PBS and private enterprise proved unsuccessful for various reasons.
After consulting the officials at the National Archive, the department decided to press ahead with the initiative and special products head Paul Azzopardi is now in charge of the project.
Mr Abela said the project is divided into two phases - conserving the old films in a specially-built vault and digitising them.
He said all the information available on the labelled cans was being inputted into a database, and more detailed information will be added once all the films are viewed. This would be done during the digitising process when their duration and quality would be recorded.
Once all films are digitised - a process that has not yet started because the most urgent need is to preserve and halt the deterioration of the films - they will be accessible not just to the DOI but also to state archiving. The public too would be able to view them and buy copies.