Cinema pressbooks are primary resource materials originally distributed to cinema owners and the mass media with the intent of publicizing a specific motion picture. They often contained technical descriptions and synopses of a film, brief biographies of and interviews with the film's stars, advertisement and poster designs, still photographs, and suggestions for effective promotion of the film. Today, pressbooks have been replaced by the electronic press kit which includes behind-the-scenes footage from the film and videotaped interviews with the stars but will often contain the same kind of printed synopses, biographies and interviews, and still photographs that a pressbook might have contained.

The Cinema Pressbooks collection contains 1700 pressbooks from three studios and covers the years of transition from silent to talking pictures through the "Golden Era" of Hollywood filmmaking.

The Cinema Pressbooks microfilm collection is comprised of four sub-collections: Warner Bros. sound features, 1927 to 1949; Warner Bros. silent features, 1922 to 1929; Monogram Pictures, 1937 to 1946; and United Artists (including Eagle Lion Films), 1919 to 1949. Click the links below to find film titles and reel numbers for pressbooks included in the collection. A complete, alphabetical index of all film titles included in the collection is available at the publisher's Web site.

To cite a pressbook, do so for each individual film title and follow these examples:

Chicago
"Accidents Will Happen," Cinema Pressbooks from the Original Studio Collections, reel 1. Woodbridge, CT : Primary Source Microfilm, 2001.

MLA
"Accidents Will Happen." Cinema Pressbooks from the Original Studio Collections, reel 1. Woodbridge, CT : Primary Source Microfilm, 2001.

Where is the Cinema Pressbooks microfilm collection?