31 production of each film, its creators, and its synopsis. The AFI Catalog previously had documented releases from 1893 to 1909, before the advent of feature-length films, so the project remains focused on shorts from 1910 to 1933. Under the leadership of project director [and this article’s author] Sarah Blankfort Clothier, a team of three Researchers and up to six graduate student interns per semester (all working remotely) have examined mostly contemporaneous primary sources including newspapers and trade magazines published at the time of a film’s production, to find available information about its production, release, and significance. This work has included several special projects, including a partnership with ProQuest and the University of Chicago’s Allyson Nadia Field, which provided the AFI with access to historical Black newspaper databases and enabled the Catalog team to enhance research for hundreds of African-American films that had little or no coverage in trade publications due to their systemic racism. In the Spring of 2025, when Behind the Veil concludes, AFI will publish substantive documentation for over 6,000 short films, as well as roughly 45,000 additional records that will demonstrate and emphasize the prevalence and continued relevance of short productions. In addition, AFI is collaborating with short film scholar Cynthia Felando and an educational curriculum specialist to create lesson plans for ninth to twelfth grade students about the history of short films and their enduring significance to this day. The curriculum will be available for free to educators at AFI.com. AFI also will be publishing a microsite about Behind the Veil and its research, to enable AFI Catalog users to search the database for short films exclusively, as well as to filter their results for women filmmakers and filmmakers of color. AFI will continue its efforts to include shorts in the canon of American film history by proposing future projects to potential funders, including a new initiative that will cover the release years 1934 to 1959. In the meantime, AFI Catalog Researchers and interns are making progress every day as they document early shorts and do so with a keen focus on storytellers who have been widely neglected in the existing record of cinema’s legacy, mostly due to the ongoing emphasis on feature productions. AFI aims to inform a future account of America’s cultural heritage that is more accurate, and more inclusive of the diverse innovators who helped create one of the world’s most influential and lucrative industries.
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