Research

Educational / Ephemeral / Industrial Media

  • American Jewish Committee Archives  
    This online collection features extensive audiovisual content from the American Jewish Committee's anti-prejudice campaigns in the post-World War II era. Here users will find, in addition to the films themselves, plentiful primary documentation produced by the AJC's television department about the production of these cartoons and live-action short subjects. Also includes the audio content of AJC-related radio programs from 1939 to 1955.
  • BFI Screenonline   Paid Subscription Required
    Screenonline, run by the British Film Institute, "is an online encyclopaedia of British film and television featuring hundreds of hours of film and television clips from the vast collections of the BFI National Archive, and several hours of recorded interviews with film and TV personalities". Although films may only be viewed by users at British universities, the rest of the website provides vast amounts of information pertaining to everything from comprehensive actors' filmographies to UK box-office statistics.
  • British Pathe Limited  
    British Pathe Limited makes available 75 years of English newsreel footage. Users can join the site at no cost and download the films for private usage. The database's search function allows user to search by keyword, title, or theme. Very highly recommended.
  • Charles Urban  
    A site about the British motion picture technology pioneer, who created the early colorization technique Kinemacolor. Urban was particularly interested in making educational films. This is a well-researched site, with timelines, technological and biographical data, as well as information about Urban's contemporaries. Created by Luke McKernan, a British film historian.
  • Film and Sound Online   Paid Subscription Required
    Film and Sound Online is a set of collections of film, video, and sound material, available for download. Accessible to students and researchers at British universities.
  • Internet Archive: Prelinger Archive  
    The Prelinger Archive online consists of about 2,000 "ephemeral" films: ads, amateur films, industrial films, and other films that don't fit into traditional genres.
  • Kinsey Institute: Film and Video Collection  
    The Kinsey Institute's film and video collection represents one of the largest collections of visual material pertaining to the study of human sexuality. The film archive "consists of approximately 8,000 film titles ranging in date from 1915 through the 1970s. The collections contain a variety of formats including super 8, 8mm, 16mm and 35mm."
  • London Transit Museum Film Collection  
    This site features streaming video of and background information about the films in the London Transit Museum collection, which covers the period from 1910 to 1970 and is best known for documentaries made by British Transport Films in the 1950s and 1960s.
  • Prelinger Library   Peer Reviewed
    The official website for the physical collection of the Prelinger Library in San Francisco. The library contains "40,000 books, periodicals, printed ephemera and government documents," many of which pertain to television and media, and to industrial/educational film production.
  • Roland Collection of Films and Videos on Art  
    The Roland Collection consists of 640 films and videos on art, made by 230 filmmakers from 25 different countries.
  • Sloan Science and Film  
    The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science and Film website hosted by the Museum of the Moving Image "supports the creation of realistic and entertaining stories about science and technology, many of which challenge existing stereotypes about scientists and engineers". The website features full-length digital films, dialogues between scholars and filmmakers, and a selection of articles written by film critics.