Film and Television 106A: History of the American Motion Picture (2012/13)   Tags: american film history, cinema, film studies  

For paper #2, these books can assist with analyzing films (mise en scene, editing, etc.), and with drafting a critical paper.

Welcome to the UCLA Library guide for Film and Television 106A. This guide is intended as a starting place for researchers, pointing to tools for finding books, articles, reviews, and other information. Please use the tabs above to find resources in different information categories. Also remember that 106A has numerous books available on course reserve.

Do not search this guide with keywords from your topic. You must click on the resources first in order to conduct searches.

If you have any questions, please visit a library reference desk or contact Diana King for an appointment or e-mail reference.

Not sure where to start? These links provide access to each volume of Charles Musser's History of the American Cinema, available online, which contains a wealth of information on decades of cinema history. The set is also available in a print edition at the Arts and College Libraries.

Want more starting places? Browse some of the reference books available at the Arts Library on early motion pictures.

For use of the online version at home, make sure your computer is configured for off-campus access if you do not live on campus.

A primary source is a document that was created during the time period being studied. This includes newspaper and magazine articles, original film reviews, pamphlets, interviews, government publications, manuscripts, diaries, and other sources that speak to the context of the time period. Primary sources provide firsthand evidence of historical events recorded by those who lived it, and as such usually need to be contextualized with more recent secondary sources like histories of the time period and academic film criticism in journals.

You can usually find clues to specific primary sources by looking through secondary materials like books and scholarly articles written in the present day. These often include bibliographies of the primary works used as references, and can give you ideas about other ways to search for your topic. Some more recent books also include reprints of primary sources.

Both the "Newspapers and Reviews" and "Journal and Magazine Articles" tabs above contain links or citations to historical primary sources and secondary sources.

Research assistance at the UCLA Arts Library is available in person on weekdays. See Reference and Research Help for complete reference service options.