Glossary of Filmographic Terms

The FIAF Glossary of Filmographic Terms is intended to assist film catalogers and others in identifying and translating credit terms appearing both on screen and in documentation sources. (click HERE for the full introduction to the Glossary). The current edition includes 13 languages, seven (English, French, Spanish, Chinese, German, Italian, and Portuguese) with complete terms and definitions, two (Finnish and Lithuanian) with complete terms (without definitions), and another four (Danish, Dutch, Hungarian, and Russian) with partial terms and no definitions. We will continue updating the Glossary as additional content, including additional languages, becomes available.

To use the search engine below, type in your desired term; the results will return all exact matches. You can then click on a specific hyperlinked term and receive a results list with definitions and translations in all languages currently available. Please note that the database only searches on words of more than three letters (for example, a search for ‘set’ returns no results), but you will get results with ‘set designer’ or ‘set decorator’) so use terms with more than three letters. To search for entries containing parts of words, use an asterisk at the end of the partial word you wish to search for.

The data is also available in spreadsheet format by clicking HERE.