Subject Research, Course Guides, Documentation: Films at Union: Home

Introduction

As demand for film has increased, Schaffer Library has expanded its streaming services and increased purchase of media for Union College. At the same time, we've switched from an "all or nothing" model for Kanopy to "mostly all:" most of the films you need in Kanopy will be available right away, and some will need to be requested. This guide provides search strategies and links to help you find the films you need.

Discover videos with Primo

To search for films, start with Primo. Primo searches our film collection at Schaffer Library, as well as videos in Academic Video Online, Docuseek, and other video services. We are working to incorporate Kanopy records into Primo as well.

Tips:

When searching for a title, enter as much of the title as you know.
Films from a particular region may be difficult to find. We recommend you use Primo to perform an advanced search for country and "film" or "motion picture"
To search by a director, enter some or all of the director's name. It does not matter if the first or last name is the first search term.

Film databases

Academic Video Online
Multidisciplinary database of videos, including documentaries, interviews, performances, news programs and newsreels, and more.
BBC Landmark Video Collection
From the depths of the oceans to the Antarctic ice cap, from a firsthand view of evolution in animals and plants to Cretaceous Alaska and far-flung corners of the globe, the BBC Landmark Video Collection is your groundbreaking exclusive HD view into our natural world.
Dance in Video: Volume 1
Dance in Video contains dance productions and documentaries by the most influential performers, choreographers, and companies of the 20th century. Selections cover ballet, tap, jazz, contemporary, experimental, and improvisational dance, as well as forerunners of the forms and the pioneers of modern concert dance. Includes dozens of documentaries, interviews, and dance instruction videos comprising 500 hours of high-caliber content, as well as an overview of 20th Century concert dance, including the forerunners and pioneers of modern dance, covering ballet, tap, jazz, contemporary, experimental, and improvisation. Invaluable as a resource since dance is an inherently visual medium, the content includes coaching sessions and recreations of past choreographers works.
Dance Online: Dance Studies Collection
The only collection of curated primary and secondary full-text materials to support informed performance, pedagogy, and scholarship in dance.
Digital Theatre Plus
Includes streaming access to unique films of leading British theatre productions; behind-the-scenes documentaries, interviews, and written teaching and learning resources. By revealing the world of the rehearsal room, dressing room, backstage and beyond, their documentaries and interviews introduce theatre as a vibrant, exciting art form through a familiar and accessible medium.
Docuseek
Docuseek provide access to documentary films, providing exclusive educational streaming access to content from Bullfrog Films, Icarus Films (including The Fanlight Collection and dGenerate Films), Kartemquin Films, MediaStorm, the National Film Board of Canada, Scorpion TV Sincerely Films, Terra Nova Films and KimStim.
Ethnographic Video Online, Teaching Edition
Ethnographic Video Online, Royal Anthropological Institute Teaching Edition is a curriculum-aligned collection of videos and segments curated to support the teaching of introductory anthropology courses.
Kanopy
Kanopy has more than 26,000 streaming films in its collection - including leading producers such as Criterion Collection, Universal Paramount, The Great Courses, New Day Films, California Newsreel, Kino Lorber, PBS, BBC, First Run Features, Media Education Foundation, Documentary Education Resources - on every topic imaginable.
Music Online: Opera in Video
Music Video Collection
A comprehensive collection of operatic performances covering the most commonly studied operas in music history, opera literature, and performance classes. Multiple productions of the most studied operas allow for comparative analysis, showing various interpretations of staging/set design. Interviews with singers, stage designers, and directors, integrated with excerpts of live performances.
National Theatre Collection
National Theatre Collection brings the stage to life through access to high definition streaming video of world-class productions and unique archival material offering significant insight into theatre and performance studies. Through a collaboration with the U.K.'s National Theatre, this collection offers a range of digital performance resources never previously seen outside of the National Theatre’s archive.
Poets on Screen
Poets On Screen contains video clip recordings of poets reading their own and other poets' works. Browse a list of poems read by contemporary poets; the poems can be viewed alphabetically by author/reader or by poem title.
The Sixties Video Titles
...contains fifty hours of primary footage and secondary documentaries that explore the key events of the sixties and early seventies, including the civil rights movement, the women's rights movement and the sexual revolution. It features interviews with major players of the decade, including political leaders John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Richard Nixon, and revolutionaries such as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Cesar Chavez, and Elaine Brown.

Schaffer Library LibGuides

Films at Union

Introduction

Discover videos with Primo

Film databases