An archival film is a form and practice of participating in the work of history amid contemporary demands. The importance of archival practice is highlighted by changes in modern and contemporary history and the change in perception caused by such changes in history. The importance of records and cultural heritage arises from the process of arranging and contextualizing them rather than being fixed in themselves. The importance of this point of view is that it makes visible the fact that knowledge or historical concepts that were previously seen as fixed are constructs created by structures. Therefore, contemporary historical work is an archival transformation that produces alternative knowledge through the act of appropriately modifying and arranging records. At this point, an archival film is an art form that visualizes the fact that ‘History’ or ’Knowledge’ is elaborately created through dominant values, and practices of alternative history writing as a method of creating knowledge production. The contemporary archival film not only visualizes the internal principle of the work, that is, the narrative structure created by montage and the historical sense through it, but also the history of film representation, the development of technology and changes in equipment, and the resulting diversification of spectatorship. It archives both internal and external changes of media. These characteristics are also reflected in the artist’s practical act of selecting and intentionally arranging objects to create a work. This paper calls films that adopt archives as an artistic practice methodology ‘archival film’ and describes the operation and visualization of films. At this time, archival film is both an aesthetic form and film historical archives and participates in alternative historical records by reconstructing and recording events. As an example, Vietnamese documentary director Nguyễn Trinh Thi’s Vietnam: the movie is used as an analysis text.