The Films series contains hundreds of 16mm and 35mm films, either produced or acquired by Cinecraft, Inc., dating from 1915 to 1982. The majority of the films were produced between 1950 and 1980. They are primarily sponsored works that promote businesses, advertise individual products, and advocate for industrial organizations. Industries represented include steel, railroad, oil, telecommunications, electric power, and food and beverage.

Also included in the series are educational films on topics concerning politics, economics, and history, training films for sales personnel and railroad yard employees, public service announcements, and political campaign advertisements. The city of Cleveland and the state of Ohio are common subjects. The Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company, General Electric Company, Ohio Bell Telephone Company, the Republic Steel Corporation, and the Standard Oil Company of Ohio (SOHIO) are frequent sponsors.

Many of the films in the series were not produced by Cinecraft but were acquired from other production companies for research purposes or were provided by Cinecraft’s clients. These production companies include Wilding Picture Productions, Forney Miller Film Associates, Rothacker Film Manufacturing Co., Video Films, Inc., Fred A. Niles Communications Centers, Transfilm, Inc., VPI, P.G.L. Productions, Inc., Victory Film Productions, Maslowski Wildlife Productions, Escar, Inc., Parthenon Pictures, Vision Associates, North Coast Productions, Inc., Audio Productions, Inc., among others. Several films in the series were produced by General Pictures Corporation, a studio purchased by Cinecraft in the early 1970s. Films that were not produced by Cinecraft have the production company listed in the item-level scope and content note.

Similar to the Scripts and project documentation series, project codes for Cinecraft films are included, if known. These codes are identifiers used by Cinecraft to denote the type of production and the order in which it was produced. Project codes are written in the form X-###. The letter prefix indicates the type of production (for example, “K” corresponds to television commercial films), and the production number indicates the order it was produced.

The Films series is arranged alphabetically by sponsoring client, and projects created by the same client are arranged chronologically. The processing of this series is ongoing, and the finding aid will be updated regularly as more films are added.