Types of documents available on CineFiles include newspaper clippings, film reviews, interviews, popular and scholarly articles, publicity materials, program notes, book excerpts, pamphlets, filmmakers' texts and correspondence, and many other rare archival documents dating from the early 1900s to the present.
In some cases access to documents is restricted to users with a UC Berkeley on-campus IP address.
[3] CineFiles database was created in 1994[4] and expanded in 1996 with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities to allow the Pacific Film Archive Library and Film Study Center[5] to index and digitize materials from its documentation collection and make them freely available, with copyright holders' permissions, on the Internet.
In 2006, a three-year grant from Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to expand the scope of CineFiles.
Other supporters include the Library Services and Technology Act, the Packard Humanities Institute, and individual donors.