The Department of Image and Sound Documents at the Lithuanian Central State Archive was founded in 1955. From 1965 until 2002 the archive has been independent , before from 2002 on it was reorganized and integrated into the Lithuanian Central State Archive again.

The Lithuanian Central State Archive has been a member of the International Federation of Television Archives (FIAT/IFTA) since 2004. The institution's audiovisual complex consists of film, sound and video recordings as well as photo documents. The division of Image and Sound is the main repository of cinema heritage in Lithuania and holds a total of 7.612 titles: Lithuanian chronicles from 1920-1940, chronicles of the Second World years, diverse Lithuanian newsreels and sketches from the post-war period, Lithuanian feature films, documentaries of independent film studios and individual creators, starting from 1991. The oldest original film is "The funeral of Dr. Jonas Basanavicius", created in 1927, but copies of the 1919-1926 years chronicles can also be found.

There are four basic tasks that are performed by the archive’s film department – acquisition, documentation, access and preservation. The films are collected from public organizations, private institutions, and private persons. Some of them are acquired from abroad. This Access-based information system contains all data about film documents on the title level. In 2003 the archive began to digitize films by using self-constructed digitization equipment. The material is transferred to computer, edited, subtitled, sounded and copied to DVD or mini DV according to the archive's technical possibilities and customers requests. Since 2006 only digital copies are made available for users. However, the films are also being digitized for preservation purposes. By now, 155 titles of films have been digitized as safety copies on mini DV, and further 243 titles of films have been digitized as loan copies on DVD.

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