For film collectors the world over, the name Blackhawk Films remain one of the most important companies that ever existed. For decades they were the absolute best source for access to purchase rare and important films, many from the silent era. Releasing material primarily on 16mm, 8mm, and Super 8, the company had a reputation for generally producing the best quality, and most accurate restorations, and most importantly making them available for the cinefile to own. The company started in 1927 as Eastin Films by Kent D. Eastin which originally dealt with reselling of used 35mm, and then rentals of 16mm films. Martin D. Phelan eventually joined the ranks and by the 1950’s Blackhawk Films was officially born. The companies’ assets were eventually sold to David Shepard who continued to make small runs of the high quality Blackhawk films into the 1990’s and under the name of Film Preservation Associates until he ultimately sold these same assets to Serge Bromberg and Lobster Films out of France who currently controls the rights to the Blackhawk film materials

In addition to being one of the most important film historians, David was also a very dedicated man in regards to educating people about silent film. For years he taught general and specialty silent film courses at USC, and filled the classes with screenings of rare films from the Blackhawk collection. It is because of David’s dedication to access and the HMH Foundation Archive’s emphasis on small format films along with the cooperation of Lobster Films , that we are honored to make available what is a near complete collection of the many catalogs and bulletins that the company released over the years. Trust me, back in the day film collectors drooled each month when the catalog arrived in the mail, as they flipped through the pages again and again, frantically trying to decide what new rare print they were going to spend their money on. These days the catalogs don’t maintain much scholarly information, but for film collectors they are a goldmine of information, as to what prints are floating around out there that they might be able to find some day on the used market.

If you have any of the missing bulletins and would be willing to donate them to be scanned and uploaded, please contact us at

The following people have helped fill in missing catalogs

Tom Barnes (6 issues)

Bill Brandenstein (2 issues)

Bruce Calvert (49 issues)

John McElwee (8 issues)

Ken Segal (4 issues)

Jack Williams (4 issues)

Likewise, I am trying to combine them into a single giant searchable PDF for downloading, but so far have been unsuccessful. I may have to make a few large PDF’s but will provide a download link once successful.

Currently 453 scanned Bulletins and 20,642 pages available online…

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