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Film Studies Research Guide: Bibliographies & Filmographies

A guide to conducting research in Film Studies at Yale University, including key resources and crucial search strategies.

Bibliographies & Filmographies

Bibliographies list books, articles and often online resources about a particular topic, such as a film genre, director, portrayals of some social group, movies from a particular country. They typically categorize or annotate the entries. 

Filmographies list films on a topic, but usually not secondary sources about those films (or only list selected secondary works).

Some bibliographies also provide a filmography, either explicitly or implicitly.

A bibliography or filmography can help you quickly identify what's most relevant for your own research. There are similar resources that aim to cover the major trends, key filmmakers and most important movies -- they don't try to be comprehensive. For these resources, see Guides and Companions to Films (similar to introductions) and Dictionaries and Encyclopedias (reference sources).

How to Find Bibliographies & Filmographies

The quickest way to find a bibliography or filmography is to find a bibliography of bibliographies! That way you can page through to find the titles that will help you the most.  

Bibliographies can be located in Orbis by using the following types of Subject searches:

Filmographies can be somewhat harder to locate. Some are given the subject heading "Catalogs," for example:

However, some filmographies are part of a book, not the whole book. So it's a good idea to try Keyword searches like these:

Note that Keyword searches are a bit hit or miss, since they might not find some resources and they may produce some irrelevant results.  But they are always worth a try.

Director, Yale Film Archive