Doing Library Research in Cinema Studies

Reference | Locating Film Reviews | Finding journal articles | Locating Screenplays and Scripts | Box Office Statistics | Historical and Cultural Context | Consumer and Demographic Information | Major Archival Collections | Commercial Websites

Reference

• Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism: One of the standard reference works in the field, this guide offers articles on theorists such as Walter Benjamin and Michel Foucault. Entries on Film Theory, Cultural Studies and Feminist Theory provide useful overviews.
  
  
• Film Indexes Online allows you to search the combined catalogs of the British Film Institute (1930s-present), and the American Film Institute (1893-1970). Most records include plot summaries and references to articles and contemporary reviews.
  
  

• Complete Film Dictionary, 1997. PN1993.45 .K66 1997 Reading Room, Floor 3

• Dictionnaire du Cinéma, 1995. PN1993.45.D538 1995 Reading Room, Floor 3
  

• Dictionary of Film Terms: The Aesthetic Companion to Film Analysis, 1994. TR847.B430 1983 bookstacks
  

• Oxford Guide to Film Studies: New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. PN1995 .O93 1998 bookstacks.
  

• See also the library's guide to finding reference books and selected online dictionaries.
  
  

The Library Catalog and WorldCat (the shared catalog of library records)

Locating Film Reviews
Sources of film reviews by date

 

Finding articles in Film Studies

• Film and Television Literature Index: A core resource for film and television reviews, scholarly and critical analysis of cinema and television, and articles of popular interest. While the database very selectively indexes some journals back to the early 20th century, coverage for most titles begins in the late 1980s or 1990s. A complete list of the jounrnals indexed, with dates of coverage, can be found here.
  
  RESEARCH TIP:
  Consult the print volumes of Film Literature Index (call # Z5784.M9F48 RR3) for more thorough coverage of the years 1972-2000.
  Consult Retrospective Index to Film Periodicals (call # Z5784.M9B34 RR3) for articles published between 1930 and 1971.
  
  
• International Index to the Performing Arts: Indexes more than 200 scholarly and popular performing arts periodicals, plus a variety of documents such as biographical profiles, conference papers, obituaries, interviews, discographies, reviews and events. Most records feature an abstract, selected records are full text
  
  
• International Index to Film Periodicals (1972-present): A core resource for film criticism, reviews, and interviews, covering 300 of the most important scholarly and popular titles in the literature of film studies.
  
  
• MLA Bibliography (1926-present): Indexes materials on literature, languages, linguistics, film studies, and folklore. Includes journal articles, books, essay collections, working papers, proceedings, dissertations, and bibliographies. This list describes all of the indexed journal titles. For coverage from 1921-1925 consult the print volumes (call # Z7006.M67 bookstacks).
  
  
• Periodicals Archive Online : An excellent resource for interviews, reviews and older articles on film topics. PAO indexes several cinema journals: Cahiers du Cinéma (1951-present); Cantrills Filmnotes (1971-present); Cinéaste (1967-present); Cinema Journal (1961-present; full-text 1961-1991); Cinema Papers (1974-present); Film Comment (1962-present); Film Quarterly (1945-present); Film Review (1944-present); Films in Review (1954-present); Frauen und Film(1974-present); Journal of Popular Film and Television (1972-present; full-text 1972-1991); Literature/Film Quarterly (1973-present).

 

Locating Screenplays and Scripts

• American Film Scripts Online: Provides access to some 135 scripts by 201 writers. The database has been designed to provide access at the scene or character level. It is possible, for example, to find more than 100 criminal characters in the database and view the scenes they appear in. It is equally possible to find all interior scenes in urban settings in the 1950s. These and countless other topics for further research can quickly be identified.
  
  

Box Office Statistics

• Film Daily Yearbook (1918-1969) Trade publication covering the film industry. Indexing is sparse, but the early statistical information is worth the work. PN1993.3.F48 bookstacks
  
  
• Britfilm.com's Box Office statistics has reports for Europe broken down by country and then by film.
  
  
• Box Office Mojo: Commercial website claims to offer "the most comprehensive box office tracking available online."
  
  

Historical and Cultural Context

• Historical Abstracts: The fundamental indexing and abstracting tool for modern history. Abstracts and indexes articles appearing in 2,000 journals published worldwide, from 1954, covering world history since 1450 (except United States and Canada). Includes key historical journals from nearly every country, and selective coverage of social science and humanities journals in related fields.
  
  
• America: History and Life: The fundamental indexing and abstracting tool for American and Canadian history. Abstracts and indexes articles and reviews from 2,000 journals published worldwide from 1954. Database also includes citations to abstracts of dissertations published in these areas.
  
  
• Contemporary Women's Issues. Multi-disciplinary and worldwide coverage of gender issues since 1992.
  
  
• MLA Bibliography (1963-present): Indexes materials on literature, languages, linguistics, film studies, and folklore. Includes journal articles, books, essay collections, working papers, proceedings, dissertations, and bibliographies. This list describes all of the indexed journal titles. For coverage from 1921 on consult the print volumes Z7006.M67 bookstacks.
  
  
• Art Abstracts (1984-present): Subjects indexed include film, video, and television.
  
  
• Art Index Retrospective: Includes articles in film studies published between 1929 and 1984.
  
  

Consumer and Demographic Information:

• What is a dollar worth? From the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, a nice calculator which actually uses movie ticket price as an example. Covers the years 1913-2005.
  
  
• Global Market Information Database Statistics on movie-going. Browse Reports/Consumer Lifestyle reports; Consumer Lifestyles in The United States. See also Motion Picture Industry, a guide to library resources authored by Regenstein's Business and Economics specialists.
  

 

Film and video archives
Don't forget to search WorldCat to identify unique resources.

• American Memory Project
  Developed by the Library of Congress, this database includes motion picture collections, and films on special topics, including "Before and After the Great Earthquake and Fire: Early Films of San Francisco, 1897-1916", "Theodore Roosevelt: His Life and Times on Film", "America at Work, America at Leisure: Motion Pictures from 1894-1915", "The Spanish-American War in Motion Pictures" and more.
  
  
• Archival Resources
  Contains collection records and collection guides for library and museum holdings across the country. You may search the databse for names, keywords, etc., and also view detailed digitized guides, including finding aids for University of Chicago manuscript collections.
  
  
• Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
  The Pacific Film Archive collection includes more than 10,000 titles, with areas of concentration in Soviet silent and Eastern European cinema, international animation, American experimental cinema, video art of the '70s, and the largest collection of Japanese cinema outside of Japan. The collection also includes an international selection of feature films and documentaries. Among the artists represented are Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Larissa Shepitko, Dziga Vertov, Gunvor Nelson, Chick Strand, and George Kuchar. It has a searchable database with over 6,000 records.
  
  
• Black Film Center/Archive at the University of Indiana
  A diverse collection of over 800 historic and contemporary Hollywood and independent films; black & white and color, silent and sound; features, documentaries, dramatic and musical shorts, comedy shorts, newsreels and animations in 35mm, 16mm, 8mm, DVD, and videocassette formats.
  
  
• Public Moving Image Archives and Research Centers
  A master list of international collections maintained by the Library of Congress.
  
  
• Regenstein holds several extensive film studies archives on microfilm
  
  
• UCLA Film and Television Archives at the University of California-Los Angeles.
  This is the nation’s second largest collection of media materials and the largest of any university in the world. The collection holds over 220,000 television and motion picture titles. The FTA holds many of the major motion picture production companies films and many independent films.

Commercial and non-subscription websites

• Bollywood Movie Database Filmographies, fan reviews, photographs
  
• Internet Movie Database Includes trailers, filmographies, links to discussion lists and fan sites, more.
• Italian Cinema Reviews, trailers from La Repubblica
• Roger Ebert 1985-present
• Women's Studies Film Reviews from the University of Maryland