Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

AFI Catalog of Feature Films,
1941-1950
Publications / Publicaciones
Ken Wlaschin
The AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1941-1950, the latest volume in the
American Film Institute’s series of definitive reference books that
document the history of American motion pictures, will be published in
April 1999.
The 1940s volume includes entries for 4,316 films documented in two
large volumes of text and one large index volume. It is the largest ever
written by the AFI and has been researched for many years. The threevolume
set will published by the University of California Press.
Principal research began in 1993 though a core title database had been
compiled in 1991. The Catalog, a division of AFI’s National Center for
Film and Video Preservation in Los Angeles, has a staff of eleven persons
under the direction of Executive Editor Patricia King Hanson.
Assignments are divided by studio to enable staff members to become
familiar with the production and personnel of each company.
Independent films are divided chronologically.
The primary source of filmographic documentation was the film itself
and more than 93% of the films were viewed. Credits and plot
information for the other 7% were derived from cutting continuity or
studio records, copyright records, censorship records, reviews and news
items. Contemporary and modern sources were studied to obtain the
best possible credits and information.
There are many sources of filmographic information available in book
and electronic form but the AFI Catalog is the only project to
systematically document the entire output of American film production.
This systematic approach not only enables historians and scholars to
have a document of record for American films, but is a benchmark for
American film preservation. AFI’s film catalogs are used by archives all
over the world to identify films without titles from all periods and have
become a major preservation tool.
The project, which began in the late 1960s, has previously published
volumes documenting the first era of film production, Film Beginnings,
1893-1910, plus feature film volumes covering the decades of the 1910s,
1920s, 1930s and 1960s; Within Our Gates: Ethnicity in American Feature
Films, 1911-1960, which covered 2,464 films dealing with the ethnic-
American experience, was published in 1997.
The AFI staff is now working on the next AFI Catalog covering featurefilm
production from 1951-1960.
The project has received primary funding through grants from the
National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional funding was
106 Journal of Film Preservation / 58/59 / 1999