Film & Video Resources

A digital archive of thousands of vintage television commercials dating from the 1950s to the 1980s from Duke University.

The American Archive of Public Broadcasting is a "collection of 40,000 hours contains thousands of high quality programs that have had national impact. The vast majority of this initial American Archive content, however, consists of regional and local programs that document American communities during the last half of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first. This extraordinary collection includes local news and public affairs programs, local history productions that document the heritage of local communities, and programs dealing with education, environmental issues, music, art, literature, dance, poetry, religion, and even filmmaking on a local level."

Vintage motion pictures offering rich perspectives on the American Indian experience. The site organizes titles by tribes, linking to films for more than 100 tribes. A text box to describe each film is nonfunctioning, providing only "lorum ipsum dolor" filler text as a place holder. Apart from what displays in the film itself, no additional information (publication date, running time, etc.) is provided. These archival films are not perfect. Some were educational shorts used in American schools from the 1930s to the 1970s. Several have abbreviated titles or missing endings. Some are spliced or scratched; others have faded color. These films are windows into the human past, stunning documents with much to tell us about our New World story.

The American Memory project from the Library of Congress provides access to several hundred early motion pictures

Free educational videos from the Annenberg Foundation, a non-profit educational organization.

AP Archive is the film and video archive of The Associated Press -- the world's largest and oldest news agency. Our cameramen have been capturing the iconic moments that have shaped the world in which we live and we have over 1.7 million news, sports, entertainment and fashion stories dating back to 1895 to share with you, here and on our British Movietone channel - https://www.youtube.com/c/BritishMovietone

Life & Times in Britain form 1890 - 2011

Contains all C-SPAN programs since 1987, indexed, abstracted, and cataloged by the C-SPAN Archives staff

The Cineteca (University of Chile), the oldest film archive in the country, has made over 150 films spanning the entire history of national cinema freely available to download or stream online.

Provides access to online films, texts, images, and audio recordings related to the Civil Rights movement in the United States in the 1950's and 1960's.

Professors post clips media analysis through the use of film clips.

Culture Unplugged (C.U.) provides access to hundreds of documentary films, that spans multiple facets of global issues, produced through a "socially and spiritually conscious" lens. Note: This link defaults to documentaries from CU's virtual film festival. Scroll down and select "Show Films from Archive" for access to more content.

Provides streaming access to a large collection of documentary films about American folk, or roots, cultures. Includes essays about the traditions and filmmakes, transcriptions, study and teaching guides, suggested readings, and links to related websites. Site provides simple keyword and advanced searching, as well as ability to brose by subjects, regions, titles, filmmakers, and other categories. Video displays include links to additional, related films.

The Moving Image Archive within the Internet Archive provides access to nearly a quarter million films.

The Media Burn Archive is a collection of over 6,000 independent, non-corporate tapes that reflect cultural, political and social reality as seen by independent producers, from 1969 to the present.

Watch over 2,000 classic and brand-new NFB titles

Includes classics, indies, film noir, documentaries and other films, created by some of our greatest actors, actresses and directors.

Classical music, opera, popular song, musical theater, dance, drama, and performance documentaries.

Provides access to full-length documentary films from established distributors and first-time filmmakers. The Snag Films library includes more than 850 films. Filmmakers and distributors submit titles to SnagFilms for curatorial review. Videos stream in Flash. The site organizes titles by broad Topics (such as Arts, Environment, Health, History, Women's Issues, etc.) and by Channels (including well-established film companies such as Alive Mind, Icarus, Fanlight, PBS, and National Geographic). The SnagFilms website encourages donating to causes by linking each film to a specific charity. Brief commercials precede and are interspersed through the video playback.

16mm travel films from 1930 - 1970. Part of The UCSD Library collection of Amateur film.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) collections includes over 4,500 moving image historical records (e.g., propaganda films, Newsreel footage) and over 7,600 hours of streaming video oral history testimonials.

Provides online access to unique and historically important content produced by the public television and radio station WGBH.

YouTube Movies provides access to thousands of commercial films (mostly Studio) across most popular film genres. Though many films require a rental cost, there are hundreds of free films legally available in this section.