Researching silent cinema and/or early women filmmakers? The following is an expanding list of useful online resources (databases, publications, personal websites, and more).
The Amateur Movie Database: This resource from the Department of Communication and Media Studies at the University of Calgary is a “tool for exploring the history of amateur cinema in North America during the middle of the 20th century.”
AFI Catalogue – The American Film Institute: The AFI Catalogue is a user-friendly database with information on film titles, credits, film plots, and much more.
American Memory Collection: Part of the Digital Moving Image Collections (from the Library of Congress’s Motion Picture Broadcasting & Recorded Sound Division), this American-focused resource features curated online collections that contain still and moving images, articles, and more. Collections include: “The Life of a City: Early Films of New York” and “The Origins of American Animation.”
American Silent Feature Film Database: A collaboration between the Library of Congress’s Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation and the International Federation of Film Archives, this database “represents the first comprehensive survey of the survival of American silent feature films. It contains information on nearly 11,000 U.S. feature films released between 1912-1929, and holdings information about 3,300 of those titles for which elements are known to exist.” This database is from the report “The Survival of American Silent Feature Films: 1912-1929,” published in 2013.
The Bioscope: Reporting on the World of Early and Silent Cinema: An online publication concerning silent film research, festivals, conferences, and more. Although no longer being updated, the website remains a valuable tool for silent film research.
Cinema Usherettes: A Cultural History of the Cinema Usherette looks at the female usher from the early years of cinema through the 1970s.
Cine Silencioso: Fimes Estrangeiros Exhibidos no Brasil 1896-1916: A database dedicated to research on foreign films exhibited in Brazil during the silent era.
Cine Silente Mexicano: Historical database on silent films and filmmakers from Mexico.
Colonial Film: An extensive archive of films having to do with life in the British colonies.
The Complete Index to World Film Since 1895: This online database “contains information on over 507,364 films produced in most countries of the world between 1888 and 2015.”
DocSouth: Going to the Show: “Going to the Show documents and illuminates the experience of movies and moviegoing in North Carolina from the introduction of projected motion pictures (1896) to the end of the silent film era (circa 1930).”
Domitor Journals Project: A collaborative and curated list of digital collections of periodicals relevant to early cinema studies.
Domitor Teaching Resources: “The scope here is broad and intended to promote conversations and collaborations across early cinema studies, media archaeology, archival practice, and media art, all of which bear in important ways on how students intersect with the study of film and media history.”
Early African American Film: Reconstructing the History of Silent Race Films, 1909-1930: Produced by a group of undergraduate and graduate students in the Digital Humanities program at the University of California, the “main goal of this project was to collaboratively create a database on early African-American silent race films by drawing together information in a wide range of primary and secondary sources…[and] contains information on films, actors, production companies, and other aspects of early silent-era African American race films. The database is intended to allow the public to learn about this period in film history that is too rarely discussed.”
Early Cinema Filmography of Ontario (ECFO): “Early Cinema Filmography of Ontario (ECFO) is an ongoing research project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).The project’s chief researchers are Marta Braun of Ryerson University and Charlie Keil of University of Toronto. ECFO provides data on all films made in Ontario between 1896 and 1930. As such, it functions as a parallel to the catalogue of early Quebec films compiled by the GRAFICS research group, headed by Professor André Gaudreault of University of Montreal Braun and Keil began their research on early Ontario cinema in 1995, with a SSHRC-funded project on the reception of early cinema in Toronto. The current filmography is an outgrowth and development of that initial research project.”
Early Cinema History Online (ECHO): Early Cinema History Online (ECHO) is a growing database of over 35,000 individual film titles (and associated credits) for films released between 1908 and 1920 in the United States.
Early Cinema in Scotland, 1896-1927: This digital resource “is a three-year research project (2012-2015) funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council. It is based at the University of Glasgow in partnership with the University of Edinburgh.” Includes annotated filmographies, a map of venues, and annotated lists of relevant people, companies, and primary sources.
Early Russian Cinema: A research website produced by the Department of School of Literary History and Theory at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Russia. Includes links to archival materials and streaming films, as well as an interactive film program from 1909 and essays for contextualization.