American Silent Feature Film Database
The American Silent Feature Film Database, which was created in conjunction with the report "The Survival of American Silent Feature Films: 1912-1929," contains searchable information for nearly 11,000 U.S. feature films, including which U.S. and international archives hold materials on the 3,300 titles for which film elements are known to exist. The American Silent Feature Film Database is a cooperative project of the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation and the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) External.
The era of the American silent feature film lasted from 1914 to 1929. During that time filmmakers established the language of cinema, the motion pictures they created reached a height of artistic sophistication, and these films with their recognizable stars and high production values spread American culture around the world.
The Survival of American Silent Feature Films: 1912–1929
A ground breaking study of the survival rates of feature-length movies produced in the United States before the general advent of the sound era. Historian and archivist David Pierce has taken a major step toward resolving one of the most intractable problems in the field of film preservation: determining, with certainty, how many of the films produced in the United States during the twentieth century survive today.
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The American Silent Feature Film Survival Database is currently not available online. We hope to launch a new and improved version of this resource in the near future. In the interim, the staff of the Moving Image Research Center will provide information from the database upon request. Please submit your inquiry via Ask a Librarian and limit the request to ten titles.
Lost U.S. Silent Feature Films 1912-1929 (PDF, 4.32MB), a listing of approximately 7200 film titles considered lost. These are films in which only a fragment, trailer, outtakes or stills survive.
Silent Film Project Update (PDF, 449KB), a listing of silent (and select sound era) film titles borrowed from private collectors and other sources which have then been cataloged and digitally preserved to ensure their availability for public viewing and research through the Silent Film Project at the Library of Congress.
