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 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.

Chicago Film Archives acquired this collection from the Lincoln Middle School in Park Ridge, Illinois. The collection consists of educational films made for primary and secondary school-age children. Film producers and distributors in this collection include BFA Educational Media, Coronet Instructional Films and Encyclopedia Britannica Films. Film subjects range from grammar, science and history to social manners and world cultures. Selected highlights listed from the collection include films that tie into Chicago and the Midwest.

These films were once part of Minnesota State's Memorial Library Collection. The collection includes shorts, features, and educational films whose subjects range from sexual behavior and drug experimentation to the history of dance and design.

The Rod Nordberg Collection contains 16mm film prints and videotapes of documentary series and educational programs produced by Chicago’s public television station WTTW 11 and Rod Nordberg’s company Hollywood East in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. These include The Architecture of Chicago (1968-9), Metro!!! The School Without Walls (1970), Until I Die (1970) Earthkeeping (1972-3), and Making M*A*S*H (1981). The collection also features 16mm prints of student films from Columbia College, the Chicago Public High School for Metropolitan Studies (Metro), and University of Illinois at Chicago Circle (UICC), as well as 16mm Chicago home movies from the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s collected by Nordberg.

This collection consists of "orphan" films and is named after William O'Farrell, a Canadian moving image archivist and champion of the neglected, lost film and regional archives in general.

The Regional Educational Media Center Association of Michigan (REMC) was founded in 1969, operating through the intermediate school district structure to provide various educational programs and services locally as well as collaborating on statewide programs. This collection consists of 16mm instructional and educational films produced by Coronet, McGraw-Hill, EBE Encyclopaedia Britannica Educational Corporation and multiple other production companies. These films span diverse subject matter including but not limited to health and safety, science, history, geography, social guidance and youth, and would have been available to teachers for classroom use.

Chicago Film Archives acquired this collection from the Southern Illinois University library, located in Edwardsville, Illinois. The library deaccessioned their entire 16mm film collection in 2007, and CFA selected sixty-three films from over 3,000 titles. These works span across genres, from experimental shorts to feature documentaries to educational and instructional films. The McGraw-Hill Book Company and the Encyclopedia Britannica distributed a substantial number of these films, and others are still currently in distribution by the National Film Board of Canada, California Newsreel, and Maysles Films. Highlights of this collection include works by Millie Goldsholl (another CFA collection), the documentary Coalmining Women, about the history of women in the United States Coalmining Industry, and Skater Dater, an amusing educational film assessing male rivalry and teen sexual awareness.

This collection of 16mm films includes full historical shows ("Chicago 1968", "Black Power", "See How They Ran", etc.) as well as historical footage of sports, political events and other historical happenings (anti-war protests, courtroom footage, prohibition, etc).

The Bert Van Bork Collection contains films Van Bork directed and produced while working at Encyclopedia Britannica Films. Also included in the collection is his 1999 short documentary EYEWITNESS, which examines the sketches and paintings done secretly by men and women who lived and died inside the walls of Nazi death camps.