PRIMARY SOURCES for Film Research

Hollywood and the Production Code (PN1993.5 U6 H545 2006) contains the files related to 500 films produced between 1927 and 1968, selected from the records of the Production Code Administration (PCA). The records document forty years of self-regulation and censorship in the motion picture industry.

Film Daily (PN1993 .A12 M35 1989 Ser. 1) for 55 years was the daily newspaper of the film and, later, the television industries. It provided the latest trade news, details of films launched, films in progress, industry takeovers, financial crises, budget difficulties, company liquidations and court cases.

Film Daily Yearbook (PN1993 .A12 M35 1989 Ser. 2) and predecessors (1915-1969) "reflects and summarizes developments, and provides a detailed index to films reviewed in Film Daily. Each year the Yearbook provides a state of the industry summary through its features, editorial, detailed notes on film-related companies, advertising and indexing..."

American Film Scripts Online contains 776 scripts by 856 writers together with detailed, fielded information on the scenes, characters and people related to the scripts.

Art Index Retrospective (1929-1984) is a bibliographic database that cumulates citations to Art Index volumes 1-32 of the printed index published between 1929-1984. The database cites articles from periodicals published throughout the world. Periodical coverage includes English-language periodicals, yearbooks, and museum bulletins, as well as periodicals published in French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Dutch.

The Complete Index to World Film since 1895 In addition to selected journal article citations, it indexes the following: Over 576,000 titles to search (392,830 Film Titles; 185,421 Alternative Titles); Time span 1890-2006; Films of 175 countries; ; 505,090 People; 94,263 Production/releasing companies; 40,553 Literary Sources; 402,674 References and 850 Series; 32,000 Birth/Death particulars.

e-newspapers The main access point to UTLibrary's collection of both current and historical newspapers - online, on microform, and in print. Includes sections on Canadian, U.S., and international material, as well as a helpful link to the "Research Guide to Finding Newspapers".

Film Indexes Online brings Film Index International (British Film institute) and the AFI (American Film Institute) catalog together in one site. Film Index International is a comprehensive filmography from 1900 to the present that offers international coverage of over 120,000 films and 735,000 film personalities from over 180 countries. The AFI Catalog, compiled by specialist researchers at the American Film Institute (AFI), is the premier resource for American films, providing an exhaustive view of American features produced between 1893 and 1971.

Historical Newspapers Online incl. 77?e Official Index to The Times, Palmer's Index to the Times, and The Historical Index to The New York Times, starting points for students and scholars of all aspects of British life and world affairs in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers. 4th ed. Print version also available. Written for film students and film buffs alike, this set features thorough coverage of legendary films, actors, actresses, directors, writers, and other production artists through detailed essays and commentary by experts. Entries include biographies, filmographies, comprehensive credits, production information, major awards, and bibliographies.

International Directory of Film and TV Documentation Collections contains information about collections of paper archives, scripts, press materials, stills, posters, and all other film documentation held in more than 145 of the world's foremost film archives, libraries, and educational institutions in fifty-four countries. Entries include contact information, descriptions of each collection's scope and contents, and access guidelines.

International index to the Performing Arts (IIPA) provides indexing and abstracts for more than 240 international periodicals with coverage as early as 1864. IIPA covers a broad spectrum of the arts and entertainment industry incl. dance, film, television, drama, theater, stagecraft, musical theater, circus performance, opera, pantomime, puppetry, magic, performance art and more.

JSTOR Provides access to complete back runs of carefully selected core journals in the humanities & social sciences, including the full text of numerous e-journals from the very first issue.

MLA International Bibliography (1921+; from 1921-1955 only US publications indexed) The MLA is one of the fundamental research tools for the humanities, includes over 4,400 periodicals (including peer-reviewed e-journals) and series and consists of over 1.6 million citations for articles, books, book chapters, book reviews, dissertations, essays, working papers, proceedings, bibliographies, and Web sites. In multiple languages.

New York Times (ProQuest Historical Newspapers) (1851-2004) NYTimes Film reviews PN1995.

North American Theatre Online (Alexander Street Press) is a comprehensive reference work covering all aspects of the Canadian and American theatre. It includes some 40,000 pages of major reference materials, together with records to over 30,000 plays, over 57,000 people, 5,400 theatres, nearly 22,000 productions, and 2,500 production companies. The file also includes some 10,500 images, playbills, postcards, scrapbooks and other resources.

Periodicals Archive Online provides full-text coverage of a growing number of digitized periodicals that have been indexed in its sister database,

Periodicals Index Online

Periodicals Index Online indexes articles published in humanities and social sciences journals from 1665 to 1995. The database indexes every article in each journal, from volume 1 to recent times.

ProQuest Digital Dissertations 1861-1996 (citations only); 1997+ (full text) provides on-line access to dissertations in digital (PDF) format starting with titles published from 1997 forward plus any earlier dissertations converted to digital format. The full text of other dissertations in paper and microfilm/microfiche format may be ordered either through interlibrary loan or directly from ProQuest.

Treasures from the Film Archives (FIAF) contains unique information about silent film holdings in international film archives, and currently provides minimal credit information and holdings on over 35,000 works. Included are silent shorts and features, fiction and non-fiction, from 90 of the world's major film archives. The database was updated in 2001 and 2002

WilsonWeb incl. Readers Guide Retrospective (1890-1982) and Humanities & Social Sciences Retrospective (1907-1984). Readers' Guide Retrospective contains comprehensive indexing of the most popular general-interest periodicals published in the United States and reflects the history of 20th century America. Humanities and Social Sciences Retrospective cites articles from English-language periodicals. Periodical coverage includes some of the best-known scholarly journals and numerous lesser-known but important specialized magazines. These two journal article databases can be searched simultaneously.

Variety online full-text

BFI National Archive (UK) is one of the world's greatest collections of film and television. The majority of the collection is British material but it also features internationally significant holdings from around the world.

Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture (U. of Exeter) The Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture contains both a public museum and an academic research centre, housing one of Britain's largest public collections of books, prints, artefacts and ephemera relating to the history and prehistory of cinema.

British Pathe (1896-1970) A digital news archive that allows users to preview items from the entire 3500 hour British Pathe Film Archive which covers news, sport, social history and entertainment from 1896 to 1970.

The British Universities Newsreel Database (BUND) contains details of all traceable stories covered by British newsreels and cine magazines between 1910 and 1979. It is based on the surviving newsreel issue sheets and records some 160,000 individual stories. It is an academic resource, and lists all the stories released by the British newsreels irrespective of whether the films exist or not. However, most of them do, and can be found in the five archives which have supported the Newsreel Project: British Movietonews, British Pathe News, the ITN Archive, the Imperial War Museum Film and Video Archive, and the BFI's National Film and Television Archive (see Newsreel Archives page).

Cinefiles (Pacific Film Archive) is a database of reviews, press kits, festival and showcase program notes, newspaper articles, and other documents from the PFA Library's collection. The collection contains documents from a broad range of sources covering world cinema, past and present. CineFiles currently includes materials on the films of over 130 directors whose works have been featured in PFA's exhibition program. Materials on additional directors' works are added regularly. The database also contains retrospective indexing of film titles beginning with "A" and of files describing Soviet silent films from PFA's collection. Brief authority records, including title, director, country, and year, are also currently available for over 25,000 films. When retrospective indexing is complete, the CineFiles database will hold over 200,000 documents. New titles and document images are added daily.

Cinematheque Ontario Film Reference Library maintains the world's largest resource of English-language Canadian film and film-related materials as well as a wide range of local, national and international film resources. The FRL Collection is accessible to the public through memberships or day passes, and the Library staff provides research and information services to people from all over the world. The collection includes: Over 16,000 book titles and 100 magazine titles; approximately 1000 scripts; two viewing stations, and a selection of about 6,000 film and television productions; more than 60,000 film production files; Special Collections Funding and industry contact information and directories; screenwriting software; a large and varied selection of other materials, including 200,000 images, 8,000 posters and 6,000 soundtracks.

Cinematheque quebecoise collections group together more than 30,000 films from all eras and countries, 25,000 television programmes, 25,000 posters, 300,000 photos, 1,300 pieces of historical equipment, 9,000 scripts and production documents, 45,000 books, 3,000 magazine titles and thousands of dossiers on a variety of subject, as well as objects, props and costumes.

George Eastman House, an independent nonprofit museum, is an educational institution that tells the story of photography and motion pictures - media that have changed and continue to change our perception of the world. The Motion Picture Collection at George Eastman House, one of the major moving image archives in the United States, was begun in 1949 by the first curator of film, James Card (1915-2000). His vision, daring and persistence helped to establish George Eastman House as a leading force in the field with holdings of over 25,000 titles and a collection of stills, posters and papers with over 3 million artifacts.

Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas-Austin The Ransom Center Film Collection provides opportunities for scholars working in history, music, popular culture, and textual criticism, as well as film history and criticism. The Collection is extensive. It includes more than 10,000 scripts for film, television and radio; more than 15,000 posters, lobby cards and other advertising materials; more than 1,000,000 photographs including film stills, portrait and publicity photographs, set and location reference stills, makeup and wardrobe stills, and candid, behind the scenes photographs. The bulk of the Collection covers Hollywood's Golden Age (1930-1950), but many of the archives include materials from the Silent Era, the Texas film industry, and television and radio.

Library and Archives Canada collects and preserves Canada's documentary heritage, and makes it accessible to all Canadians. This heritage includes publications, archival records, sound and audio-visual materials, photographs, artworks, and electronic documents such as websites.

Margaret Herrick Library (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) collects a wide range of materials documenting film as both an art form and an industry. One of the world's most extensive and comprehensive research and reference collections includes more than 20,000 books; 1,400+ periodical titles; 60,000+ screenplays; 200,000+ clipping files; 15,000+ posters; lobby cards, press books and other advertising ephemera; over 6 million photographs; over 300 manuscript and other special collections relating to prominent industry individuals, studios and organizations; sheet music, music scores and sound recordings; production and costume sketches; artifacts; and oral histories.

Motion Picture & Television Reading Room (Library of Congress)

Motion Picture Research Primary Sources (UC Berkeley Library) A comprehensive listing of primary source material, almost all of which is available in the University of Toronto Library system. The list of Journal Sources for Film Criticism...Before 1980 "... includes the records of numerous older film and film-related journal titles in the UCB collection.

Moving Image Collections (MIC) documents moving image collections around the world through a catalog of titles and directory of repositories.

Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) - Film and Media Collection "Founded in 1935 as the Film Library, this department's collection now includes more than 22,000 films and four million film stills; the strongest international film collection in the United States, it incorporates all periods and genres. Among the holdings are original negatives of the Biograph and Edison companies, and the world's largest collection of D. W. Griffith films. The Department's video collection, begun in 1970, includes some 1,000 works dating from the 1960s to the present, ranging from educational pieces and broadcast documentaries to works by video artists."

Museum of the Moving image (New York) is dedicated to educating the public about the art, history, technique, and technology of film, television, and digital media and to examining their impact'on culture and society. Moving Image has assembled the nations (Unted States') largest and most comprehensive collection of moving image artifacts, one of the most important of its kind in the world, numbering more than 150,000 items.

National Anthropological Archives/Human Studies Film Archives (U.S. National Museum of Natural History) collect and preserve historical and contemporary anthropological materials that document the world's cultures and the history of anthropology. Their collections represent the four fields of anthropology - ethnology, linguistics, archaeology, and physical anthropology - and include field notes, journals, manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, maps, sound recordings, film and video created by Smithsonian anthropologists and other preeminent scholars.

National Film Board of Canada

National Museum of Photography, Film, and Television (U.K.)

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts houses one of the worlds most extensive combinations of circulating, reference, and rare archival collections on music, dance, theatre, recorded sound, and other performing arts. These materials are available free of charge, along with a wide range of special programs, including exhibitions, seminars, and performances. The Library is known particularly for its prodigious collections of non-book materials such as historic recordings, videotapes, autograph manuscripts, correspondence, sheet music, stage designs, press clippings, programs, posters and photographs.

Primary Resources for Film Research (Emory University)

Public Motion Picture Research Centers and Film Archives (Library of Congress)

University of Southern California Cinematic Arts Library contains several important archival collections. The Library's Performing Arts Archives contains the studio collections of MGM, Universal Studios, Twentieth Century-Fox, Hal Roach, Republic Pictures and Carolco Pictures, and, in an affiliated collection, the complete Warner Bros. Archives. Additionally the archive contains the papers and materials of some 300 individual practitioners of the art of the motion picture. These can be found by searching the Special Collections website. Search under Topic - Cinema' and/or 'Library/Collection = Cinema-Television Library.

Who's Who of Victorian Cinema a biographical guide to the world of Victorian film. It features 300 biographies of those who, behind and in front of the camera, played a significant part in creating the phenomenon of moving pictures. It is based on the book Who's Who of Victorian Cinema, published by the British Film Institute in 1996. It has been revised throughout, and new entries and background features added, to make the website serve as a reference source to the world of Victorian film and the world as seen through the eyes of the Victorian filmmakers. Victorian film we define as filmmaking in its broadest sense, from the first glimmerings in the 1870s and 80s to the death of Queen Victoria in January 1901.

Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research is one of the world's major archives of research materials relating to the entertainment industry. It maintains over three hundred manuscripts collections from outstanding playwrights, television and motion picture writers, producers, actors, designers, directors and production companies. In addition to the paper records, materials preserved include fifteen thousand motion pictures, television shows and videotapes, two million still photographs and promotional graphics, and several thousand sound recordings. WCFTR collections are richest in records of the American film industry between 1930 and 1960, popular theater of the 1940s and 1950s, and television from the 1950s through the 1970s. It has an international reputation as one of the most accessible archival repositories, where, since its founding in 1960, research undertaken using its collections has revolutionized our understanding of American cinema, theater and television.

Indexes Specifically to Film Reviews and Criticism:

Film Index International. 1900-, updated annually.

Indexes specialized film periodicals, trade publications and review sources from 1930. An invaluable source produced by the British Film Institute. Indexes most, but not all, of the titles covered in the next two works.

International Index to Film Periodicals, 1972-. London: International Federation of Film Archives, 1973-. [Pub. varies]

Covers 60 to 80 titles selected to reflect international coverage of lasting aesthetic and critical value. (Davis Reference Row 17)

Metacritic

Metacritic provides full-text film, book, DVD reviews & more.

Media Review Digest, 1973/74-. Ann Arbor, MI: Pierian Press, 1974.

"The only Complete Guide to Reviews of Non-Print Media.

Citations with descriptive notes to reviews of films, filmstrips, spoken word recordings, slides, media kits, and a variety of other media.

Writers' Program (New York, NY). The Film Index: A Bibliography. NY: Museum of Modem Art Film Library and the H.W. Wilson Co., 1941-1983. 3 vols.

Compiled under the auspices of the Writers' Program of the WPA. After vol. 1,

The New Film Index: A Bibliography of Articles in English 1930-1970. NY: Dutton 1975.

Does not include info on individual films and lists only articles but is international in the scope of topics covered.

Cumulative Indexes to Reviews:

Film Review Index: 1882-1985. Phoenix: Oryx Press, 1986. A valuable index to reviews of films "of continuing importance. " Selective in attempting to provide references to substantive reviews from a wide variety of sources, both books and articles. Saves you the trouble of checking The Readers Guide to Periodical Literature and other sources for reviews of films released before 1980.

Bowles, Stephen. Index to Critical Film Reviews in British and American Film Periodicals, Together with Index to Critical Reviews of Books about Film. NY: Burt Franklin, 1974-75.

An index to reviews in the major English-language film journals, most of them from their beginning to 1971

Film Review Annual, 1981-. Englewood, NJ: Film Review Publications, 1982-. Reprints reviews for full-length films released in U.S. markets. Reviews are drawn from a wide variety of newspapers, magazines, and scholarly journals. A variety of indexes are provided. An excellent source.

The Monthly Film Bulletin. London: The British Film Institute, 1934-. Provides thorough listings of personnel, synopses, and critical reviews by members of the institute. Useful for coverage of lesser known foreign films and those out of the mainstream. Died as a result of budget cuts by the British government.

Sight and Sound Film Review Volume. London: The British Film Institute, May 1991-December 1994.

Intended as a companion to the periodical Sight and Sound, also published by the BFI. These are the only volumes to appear so far and there is a gap from May to December 1991.

Filmfacts. NY, 1958-1977.

International in scope. For each film gives personnel, synopsis, and copies of several reviews from major U.S. newspapers and sometimes magazines. Very handy for the years it covers. Includes trashy as well as legitimate films.

The New York Times Film Reviews, 1913/1968-. NY: New York Times, 1970-. Biennial. Provides photographic reprints of reviews from the N.Y. Times.

Variety Film Reviews, 1907-1920-. NY: Bowker, 1983-.

Reprints reviews from Variety, the major trade publication for the film industry. Covers many obscure U.S. films and is particularly valuable for coverage of the international industry. (Davis Reference Row 17)