by Chloe Kaplan
AFI Communications

At right, Peter Bogdanovich directs Timothy Bottoms for 1971's THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, part of the 24 Hour Movie Marathon and Fundraiser, November 11, noon, at AFI FEST 2006 presented by Audi. Complete information about the film is available in the AFI Catalog of Feature Films. (Photo by Columbia Pictures)

Back in the 1960s, when computers were still a science-fiction concept and Google was not yet a verb, a group of visionary film historians conceived the gargantuan task of creating a print record of every feature film made in America or financed by an American production company.

That document, known as the AFI Catalog of Feature Films, began life as a hard-bound reference book 1971, and now lives digitally as the most reliable, searchable database on the Web for plot summaries, cast and crew credits and historical production notes.

Celebrated for its accuracy, comprehensiveness and depth of its data - including subject indexes, citations for reviews, news items and underlying literary sources - a team led by Executive Editor and Project Director Patricia King Hanson works with the goal of cataloguing every American feature film made since 1893.

Presently, the team is hard at work on the 1970s, a decade considered by many to be a second Golden Age for American cinema.

(See 1971's THE LAST PICTURE SHOW as part of the 24 Hour Movie Marathon, starting November 11, noon, at AFI FEST 2006 presented by Audi.)

An interesting observation while cataloging the 1970s is that many of the stars who were prominent or just starting out then are still working, especially the men: Robert De Niro, Michael Douglas, Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino and Robert Redford to name a few.

Of the women, Jane Fonda and Candice Bergen are still in the public eye.

This is quite a change from earlier eras. In the early 1970s, for example, there were few, if any stars, still active from the early 1940s, with the possible exceptions of John Wayne and Katharine Hepburn.

Who knows? Maybe Hollywood's obsession with youth is not quite what is used to be.

To find out about the making of favorites like THE WIZARD OF OZ and GONE WITH THE WIND, the AFI Catalog is a complete source.

And unlike other online databases, the AFI Catalog's plot summaries are complete - including the ending - making them especially helpful for those who may doze off early.

The AFI Catalog of Feature Films is available to AFI members online at www.AFI.com.

'No other source of information is as complete and accurate, and no other source is produced with the scrupulous level of attention to scholarship and research as the AFI Catalog.'

- Martin Scorsese