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’ to document itself and it argues that through the tropes of 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 the dominant historical narratives.