Though the Anti-Cruelty Society's film collection used to be more vast, the nine items in this collection are all that remains. This collection contains a cross between professionally produced educational shorts, as well as amateur film footage. The films feature imagery of petting zoos, animals getting check-ups at a Society clinic, animal training instructions, and the Anti-Cruelty Society's building on Grand Avenue circa 1940.

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 Chicago Public Library film collection is Chicago Film Archives' (CFA) founding collection. CFA formed in order to care for this collection of about 5,000 16mm films that the library no longer could keep. The collection contains a broad sweep of genres. A large number of films are educational and travel films, but there are also silent films, foreign and American-made theatrical films, documentaries, industrials, newsreels, sports events and children's films. Together these films comprise a rich snapshot of an educational and cultural pathway the City of Chicago built for its citizens during the mid twentieth century.

The Chuck Olin Collection is comprised of films, videotapes and ephemera made by Chuck Olin from his work at two Chicago area film production companies from the mid-60s to the late 1990s: first with the Film Group/Mike Gray Associates and after 1974 with his own Chuck Olin Associates. Included are political documentaries made by the Film Group on the 1968 Democratic National Convention; television commercials for a variety of clients including Sears, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and politicians running for election; sponsored films for the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Medical Association, and Eli Lilly; educational films for Encyclopaedia Britannica; and a documentary by Olin on the Jewish Brigade in World War II.