Research Guides
Cinema Studies: Primary Sources
This guide highlights recommended resources for research in Cinema Studies.
What are primary sources?
Primary sources are items from the time period that you are studying. For Cinema and Television, these sources could include not only the films and shows themselves, but also first hand accounts and production notes, costumes and sets, magazine advertisements and articles, and contemporaneous reviews.
Whether something is a secondary or primary source can be ambiguous and decided by context and research question point of view.
Starting points:
For magazines, check out the Media History Digital Library (AKA Lantern)
For movie reviews, search the movie title and year with The New York Times Film Reviews (1851-2019)
Access our primary source collections with the links below:
Still Images, Posters, and Scripts
Need to know how to properly cite primary source materials? Follow these links below
- Library of Congress' page about Citing Primary Sources
- UW Libguide for Citating Sources
Lobby Card for the film The Ghost of Frankenstein
Lobby Card for the film 2001 A Space Odyssey
