Library Research Guides: CINEMA & MEDIA STUDIES: Find Primary Sources

Online Film & Television Archives

Black Film Archive
Includes films from 1898-1999. Browsable by decade, genre, and country. "The films collected on Black Film Archive have something significant to say about the Black experience; speak to Black audiences; and/or have a Black star, writer, producer, or director. This criterion for selection is as broad and inclusive as possible, allowing the site to cover the widest range of what a Black film can be" (from the homepage).
Moving Image Archive
Content ranges from classic full-length films, to daily alternative news broadcasts, to cartoons, concerts, and video games. From the Internet Archive but uploaded by Archive users.
Prelinger Archives
Thousands of digitized "ephemeral" films, including advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur films.
UCLA Film & Television Archive
AAPB: American Archive of Public Broadcasting
Archive of the most significant public television & radio programs of the past 60 years.

Film & TV Scripts

Production Information

Primary Sources through the Library

British Newsreels, 1911-1930: Culture and Society on Film This link opens in a new window
More than 6,000 early twentieth-century newsreels (short-form, visual news content intended to inform and entertain the public, in black and white and entirely silent) originally shown in cinemas across Britain.
Broadcasting America This link opens in a new window
The papers of David Sarnoff, President of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), supplemented with company records, trade catalogues and advertisements. Most material spans the 1920s to the 1970s. The papers in this resource provide insight into the impact of broadcasting innovations on advertising, consumer culture, global conflicts, and the Space Race.
Socialism on Film: The Cold War and International Propaganda This link opens in a new window
Video from Soviet, Chinese, Vietnamese, East European, British and Latin American filmmakers, from the early 1900s to the late 1980s, covering everyday life and society, culture, the Cold War, memory and current affairs.
Victorians on Film: Entertainment, Innovation & Everyday Life This link opens in a new window
Showcasing the British Film Institute’s Victorian Film Collection and the Mitchell and Kenyon Collection, as well as a selection of special early large format films, this material provides a glimpse into the lives of the late Victorians and Edwardians captured between 1895 and 1913 by some of Britain’s earliest film pioneers and innovators.
Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975: Rock and Roll, Counterculture, Peace and Protest This link opens in a new window
Printed and manuscript sources, visual material, ephemera and video clips documenting the societal changes of the period in areas including music, politics, fashion, and youth culture.

Other Primary Source Collections

Media History Digital Library
Digitized collections of classic media periodicals that belong in the public domain for full public access.
World Radio History
Full text scans of historical broadcasting magazines in the fields of radio and television.
CineFiles
A project of the BAMPFA Film Library and Study Center at UC Berkeley. Contains scanned images of reviews, press kits, film festival and repertory theater program notes, newspaper articles, and other ephemera
Moving Image Source
Articles, research guides, and interviews with directors from the Museum of the Moving Image.