‘Behind the Veil’: Documenting early short films at the AFI Catalog

This article describes and makes a case for the importance of the ‘Behind the Veil’ project at the American Film Institute (AFI), involving unprecedented research of short films released in the silent and early sound eras for documentation in the AFI Catalog. AFI’s research not only assists the Institute’s ongoing efforts to record the profound influence of women and people of colour to the creation, distribution and reception of early cinema, but it also rectifies an inclination in film scholarship that has long favoured feature-length titles – a partiality that has limited historians’ efforts to study how people from diverse communities made films and how they saw themselves on-screen. With generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, AFI is on a mission to establish the foundation of a new canon that represents filmmakers, actors and audiences who have been marginalized to date, offering a look ‘behind the veil’ of historical bias to reveal the true breadth of America’s cultural legacy.