Gotham Book Mart's Spring 1938 Film File Catalog

ABSTRACT:This essay introduces the Gotham Book Mart Film File, a bibliographic catalog of film literature published in 1938. The Film File is placed in dialogue with contemporaneous efforts at cultural institutions like the Museum of Modern Art to develop film studies as a field of research. The Gotham Book Mart's catalog functions in numerous ways: generally, it reflects the state of film studies as a developing discipline in 1938; it broadens our understanding of how cultural institutions shape fields of knowledge; and it illustrates how these institutions, large and small, converged in New York's film culture. The essay suggests that bookshops and publishing were as important in the history of the city's cultural life—and in the development of new disciplines like film studies—as libraries, museums, and archives.