How to search film archives?

[Nancy Lorraine]

You can reach the GEH cataloger, who handles film access requests, directly at: [email protected].

Nancy

[Borg9]

I also wanted to mention that the online FIAF archive entries are often pretty barebones - some of them don't even have the main actors listed, so when I was searching to see which of an actor's films survived, I always ended up typing in most of the titles individually. Some of the entries do say exactly what the holding is (i.e. what kind of film gauge and what condition).

A few interesting things I found (I was obviously looking up mainly European stars):
Francesca Bertini has about 60 silent films listed as surviving, which I thought was quite incredible!
Falconetti's early two films, "Clown" and "La Comtesse de Somerive" from 1917 are both listed as surviving.
Musidora had one of the worst records - I only found 14 of her films (including the two serials) listed as surviving.
Betty Balfour had 18 surviving, including obscure titles like "La Petite Bonne du palace" and "Die sieben Toechter der Frau Gyukovics".
Theda Bara's "Madame Du Barry" is listed, but I think I've seen threads on that being some sort of error (right?).
About ten of Maciste (Bartolomeo Pagano)'s films exist, including the original "Maciste" of 1915.
Three of Pola Negri's early Polish films are listed.
Ivor Novello's early films "L'Appel du sang" and "Carnival" were listed (but "Miarka, la fille a l'ours" was not).

If there's a particular film you want looked up, I can take a look and give an example of the type of information they give.

Last Monday 31.08.2016 at the Cinémathèque Française in Paris, prior to the screening of "Nitrate Flames", the documentary about Falconetti which was part of the Dreyer retrospective, they screened some 5-6 minute footage of "Le Clown" (1917), in excellent condition.

"Nitrate Flames"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3302170/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank
"Le Clown"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0486295/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_3" target="_blank

[wingate]

The BFI has a list of viewing copies which I have used many times