Research

The Moving Image Source Research Guide is a gateway to the best online resources related to film, television, and digital media.

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 Peer Reviewed

General Film History

  • 3-D Film Archive  
    Founded in 1990 by Bob Furmanek, the 3-D Film Archive is dedicated to saving and preserving the heritage of stereoscopic film. The organization has located and restored original dual-strip 35mm Polaroid prints of more than thirty features and two dozen shorts from 1922-1955.
  • American Masters Database  
    Read well-researched biographies of important film and television personalities.
  • American Widescreen Museum  
    The American Widescreen Museum is a collection of online exhibitions on a variety of film exhibition and technology topics, including wide screen systems, color history, sound development, aspect ratios, preservation, and restoration. The websites feature a variety of resources such as technical publications, filmographies, poster galleries, journal publications, and other reference tools.
  • Archive Grid   Paid Subscription Required
    Search for primary sources in American archives. The site will tell you the title of a work or file and which archive it is in, but you will have to contact each specific archive to be able to access those works.
  • Archives USA   Paid Subscription Required
    Search for primary sources in more than 5,500 repositories and more than 161,000 collections across the United States.
  • BFI Screenonline   Paid Subscription Required
    Screenonline, run by the British Film Institute, "is an online encyclopaedia of British film and television featuring hundreds of hours of film and television clips from the vast collections of the BFI National Archive, and several hours of recorded interviews with film and TV personalities". Although films may only be viewed by users at British universities, the rest of the website provides vast amounts of information pertaining to everything from comprehensive actors' filmographies to UK box-office statistics.
  • Bill Douglas Center for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture: EVE (Everyone's Virtual Exhibit)  
    An interactive, digitized collection catalog that allows users to curate their own exhibits. The collection is one of England's largest, strong in the material culture (books, prints, artifacts) that surrounds motion picture history. Based at the University of Exeter, the center also contains a public museum.
  • Black Film Research Online  
    A database of online resources pertaining to the study of black cinema. Users can search for collections contained in archives, public libraries, and university libraries, as well as for more specific online content on black cinema festivals and retrospectives and online scholarly resources.
  • British Film Institute Bibliographies  
    The British Film Institute library's series of topical bibliographies and reading lists (some of which are annotated). These bibliographies provide an introduction to the key critical texts for each topic. There is also a general "books about film" list and a list of directories for UK film, television, video, and media.
  • Continuum   Peer Reviewed
    This website makes available almost the entire first eight volumes of the Australian cinema and media journal Continuum. Each issue is organized around a common theme and each features a number of articles, reviews, and forums.
  • Dadabase: The Museum of Modern Art Library   Peer Reviewed
    Search the physical holdings of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, including all items from the museum library, archive, and study centers.
  • Directory of Corporate Archives in the U.S.  
    An index of corporate archives that lists each archive's location, archivist, and contact information. A good source for business information in areas ranging from technology to industry history.
  • Early Visual Media: A Pictorial Media Archeology  
    This excellent resource consists of many different online exhibitions concerned with all kinds of visual media, beginning with pre-cinematic visual technology and amusements, through early television. In addition to the text, each exhibit features many unique illustrations and photographs.
  • Edison Papers  
    View scanned images of Edison's original papers, including his personal notes, correspondence, and more. Includes information on the invention of the kinetoscope and other moving image technology, as well as Edison's business records. Search the archive by author, title, or folder.
  • Entertaining America: Jews, Movies, and Broadcasting  
    An online exhibit documenting the relationship of Jews to film and television, including information on Jewish actors, directors, writers, businessmen, studio tycoons, and more. The exhibit covers specific works (Seinfeld, Your Show of Shows) and events (McCarthyism, the Holocaust) spanning from the invention of cinema to today.
  • Europa Film Treasures  
    Europa Film Treasures is an online film catalogue created by a consortium of European film archives. It offers free access, via streaming, to more than 400 films presented with extensive historical notes in five languages, and categorized by time period, country of origin, and genre.
  • Film & History   Paid Subscription Required Peer Reviewed
    Film & History is a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal that studies the exchanges between film and history. The journal is affiliated with the American Historical Association and operates under the direction of the Center for the Study of Film and History.
  • Film Literature Index   Paid Subscription Required Peer Reviewed
    An index of scholarly film periodicals.
  • German Hollywood Connection  
    This website features short introductory articles on the artistic and economic connections between American and German film workers from the earliest days of the industry to the present.
  • History on/and/in Film  
    This website reproduces papers delivered at the Third Australian History and Film Conference, held in Perth in 1985. These essays, many by well-known scholars, represent a diverse array of approaches to the study of film and history.