This collection of films was made by filmmaker DeWitt Beall in Chicago during the 1960s. A large portion of the collection consists of elements and prints related to LORD THING, a film about a Chicago-based gang named the Conservative Vice Lords. The film was never released, but won an award at the Venice Film Festival in 1971. Various other educational films, documentaries and PSAs are in this collection, including the EARTHKEEPING series which aired on PBS in the early 1970s.

The Russ and Sylvia Davis Collection contains 16mm film prints and elements produced by the couple's production company, IWF Inc. The majority are from a syndicated wrestling television show from the 1950s that included wrestlers such as Verne Gagne, Gorgeous George, and Lou Thesz. Russ was a pioneering TV personality in the Chicago broadcast area at WBKB-TV. Sylvia worked as president of their company and a producer on a number of Russ' shows.

These film materials consist of news footage Frank Koza shot from the mid 1930s through the late 1980s. They contain local, national and international news events.

The six films in this collection represent the early work of documentary filmmaker and Hollywood cameraman Peter Kuttner. The films include a student film made at Northwestern University, two films he made with students at Dillard University in New Orleans as part of the War on Poverty in 1965, and three kinescopes of shows he made at Chicago's public television station WTTW.

The Peter A. Nikulin Collection mainly consists of prints and elements from Kling Studios, Inc., a Chicago-based advertising and film production company. The collection's strength is in mid-century television; it contains prints and elements from episodes of "TV Kitchen" (an early example of the cooking show genre), "The Adventures of Uncle Mistletoe" (a daily children's puppet show sponsored by Marshall Field), "Boxing from Rainbo," and "The Old American Barn Dance" (a televised version of the popular radio show). There are also a number of animated commercials for beer, ice cream, and ginger ale.

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.

The Society of the Divine Word is an international congregation of male Catholic missionaries based in Techny, a northwest suburb of Chicago. The Society was founded in 1875 to preach in countries with insufficient or no foundation of Catholicism and to provide support to communities where the local Church is not yet viable. CFA acquired this collection in 2006 when the Robert M. Myers archives of the Society of the Divine Word deaccessioned a number of 16mm films that were not made by SDW in their collection. The collection consists predominantly of sermon films. According to the archivist at the Society of the Divine Word, these films were probably used in the classroom or for entertainment for students. It is unclear whether these works were produced in Chicago.

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).