Behind The Veil: Establishing a New Canon of Marginalized Voices at the AFI Catalog

FAIN: PW-285143-22

American Film Institute (Los Angeles, CA 90027-1625)
Sarah Blankfort Clothier (Project Director: July 2021 to present)

The expansion of the AFI Catalog, the filmographic online database which documents the first 100 years of American cinema, by adding 45,000 titles and associated data for short films released from 1893 to 1933 and completing 6,000 records of short films from the silent film era.  

The American Film Institute (AFI) upholds the first tenet of its original mission -- to preserve the history of the motion picture -- through the AFI Catalog, an authoritative online resource recording the first century of American film (1893-1993). AFI respectfully requests a three-year, $350,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in support of a landmark project to include short films in its AFI Catalog database for an unprecedented effort to study the artistic contributions of women and people of color in early film. By documenting short subjects from the silent and early sound eras (1910-1933), the AFI Catalog will illuminate the work of diverse storytellers that have traditionally been omitted from history due to a lack of scholarly resources about short films. The inclusion of short films in the AFI Catalog will allow us to look behind the veil of historical bias to reveal the true diversity of America’s cultural legacy and bring marginalized artists into view.