FIAF's Union Catalogues (1954-1988)
In the mid-1930s, the leaders of the first emerging film archives immediately realized that establishing international contacts and sharing films and information about them with other similar institutions was an absolute condition of the development of this new field. When they formed FIAF in 1938, the sharing of information about members’ film collections soon became one of its founding principles. This idea progressively materialized into the publication of various unified film catalogues (with a focus on the silent period), initially only shared among FIAF members, and more recently made available to the wider world via the Treasures from the Film Archives book and then database. This project remains to this day one of the best examples of successful international cooperation enabled by the FIAF network.
The FIAF Union Catalogue of Selected Films, soon known in the FIAF community as “the Red Book”, was compiled by Ernest Lindgren and his staff at the National Film Library in London. Completed in 1954; it was circulated to FIAF members only. It was in no way considered a definitive catalogue, but, in Lindgren’s words, a prototype. It only included a selection of about 2,000 fiction films considered the most important ones in film history, as well as 500 experimental, animated or documentary films, covering the period 1914-1952.
In the early 1960s, Jacques Ledoux at the Cinémathèque royale de Belgique offered to edit a first union catalogue of silent feature films. Listing almost 2,000 titles, it was completed and circulated to those FIAF members which had contributed to it in 1962. A second edition, containing twice as many titles, was published in 1965. Ledoux edited a third edition in 1977, and a fourth one in 1988, listing almost 6,000 titles.
Another parallel but separate project emerged in the 1960s. Codenamed Embryo, it was led by the American film scholar Jay Leyda, who was then employed by the Staatliches Filmarchiv der DDR in East Berlin. Its aim was to release a catalogue of silent fiction shorts (films less than an hour long) held in FIAF archives. A first edition containing over 4,000 titles was printed for the exclusive use of FIAF affiliates in 1967. A second edition was completed five years later. In the early 1980s, Eileen Bowser of the Museum of Modern Art in New York openly argued for the publication of a new edition of the Embryo catalogue accessible to the general public. After several years of gathering new data, integrating it into a computer database, and searching for a publisher, Embryo, now renamed Treasures from the Film Archives, was finally published in 1988, in the form of an 833-page book listing over 9000 titles contributed by 32 FIAF affiliates.
In the 1990s, under the leadership of Susan Dalton of the American Film Institute, a new version of the Treasures database finally merged the data from the catalogues of silent features and silent shorts, and also included non fiction silent films. The database, now including 20,000 titles, was made available via that FIAF's International Filmarchive CD-Rom, along with the International Index to Film Periodicals. Ten years later, it was one of the FIAF databases accessible via online publishers partnering with FIAF. Since 2015, it has been available to all professionals in the FIAF community via a search engine on the FIAF website. As of October 2020, the Treasures database, the origins of which go back to FIAF's early unified catalogues, documents nearly 61,000 film titles held in 109 film heritage institutions, including 102 FIAF-affiliated archives.
Note that only logged in members of the FIAF community can consult and download the surviving editions of the successive catalogues evoked in this introduction.
Christophe Dupin
FIAF Union Catalogue of Selected Films (also known as the 'Red Book')
Compiled for FIAF by Ernest Lindgren and the National Film Library, 1954.
Contributions by 15 of the 22 FIAF-affiliated archives.
Listed a selection of about 2000 fiction films considered the most important ones in film history, as well as 500 experimental, animated or documentary films. The period covered was roughly 1914 to 1952.
Catalogue of the Silent Long Films (Over 1,000 meters) About Which the FIAF Members Possess Documentation
Compiled for FIAF by Jacques Ledoux and the Cinémathèque royale de Belgique, 1962.
1977 titles listed, contributions by 31 FIAF affiliates.
No known copy has survived. If you know of one, please contact us at info@fiafnet.org.
Catalogue of the Silent Long Films (Over 1,000 meters) About Which the FIAF Members Possess Documentation [second edition]
Compiled for FIAF by Jacques Ledoux and the Cinémathèque royale de Belgique, 1965.
3953 titles contributed by 24 FIAF-affiliated archives.
Compiled for FIAF by Jay Leyda and the Staatliches Filmarchiv der DDR (East Berlin), 1967.
4339 titles contributed by 20 FIAF-affiliated archives.
2nd Edition, revised and enlarged for FIAF by the Staatliches Filmarchiv der DDR (East Berlin), 1972.
5184 titles contributed by 25 FIAF-affiliated archives.
Catalogue of the Silent Long Films (Over 1,000 meters) About Which the FIAF Members Possess Documentation [third edition]
Compiled for FIAF by Jacques Ledoux and the Cinémathèque royale de Belgique, 1977.
4264 titles contributed by 30 FIAF-affiliated archives.
Catalogue of the Silent Long Films (Over 1,000 meters) About Which the FIAF Members Possess Documentation [fourth edition]
Compiled for FIAF by Jacques Ledoux and the Cinémathèque royale de Belgique, 1988.
5899 titles contributed by 47 FIAF-affiliated archives.
