The films in this collection were made and collected by Chicago area film critic and filmmaker Bill Stamets. The bulk of the collection consists of Super 8 films and outtakes made by Stamets in the 1970s and 1980s. They depict political events primarily in the city of Chicago, including former Chicago Mayor Harold Washington's two election campaigns, inaugurations, and time in office; numerous street protests and marches; and cultural festivals around the city. Also in the collection are nine 16mm film prints consisting of 3 films made by Chicago filmmaker Tom Palazzolo and 6 films by Stan Brakhage.

The Charles E. Krosse Collection contains films produced and/or distributed by a Peoria film production company, C.L. Venard Productions, a company that became known for its educational films dealing with agricultural subject matter. It was donated to CFA by Charles E. Krosse, who previously worked in the Marketing division at Caterpillar. The collection contains both 16mm and 35mm films, a number of which may also be titles that Venard employees collected. Included in the collection are promotional and in-house training films made for Caterpillar, a fundraising film made for the city of Peoria, some soft-core erotic shorts, unrelated animated shorts, silent film comedies, and unidentified home movies.

The David Szabo Collection is mainly comprised of films and ephemera from David Szabo's time as a student at Columbia College in the late 1960s and his time as a freelance editor and partner of the Szabo-Tohtz editing company in the 1970s and 1980s. Included are distributed prints that are unclear as to Szabo's involvement, 16mm films and intermediate materials Szabo worked on during his time at Columbia College, advertisements he worked on as an editor in the 1970s and 1980s, and 8mm home movies dating from 1948-1963.