A BIG LIST OF SOURCES AND IDEAS
for FOUND / ARCHIVAL DIGITAL MOVING IMAGE COLLECTIONS
A crowd-sourced, collaborative, ongoing list of US and international sources of accessible / online digital moving image material for found footage student (and non-student) filmmakers.
UPDATE ON PUBLIC EDITING ACCESS 10/3/22: This document was originally set up so that anyone could directly edit the document to add new resources, but there were ongoing issues with people messing up document formatting and leaving it in a state that was hard for others to use. I then switched the document to comment-only access so that anyone could leave an editing suggestion, but apparently that has also caused significant formatting issues that have made this document hard for others to use. I’ve now switched public access to view-only just to make sure the document does not get drastically reformatted and can continue to be a useful public resource. I would still love to get new suggestions of sources to add, so please email your suggestions to me at ilusztig@ucsc.edu If you share a suggestion, make sure to include the name of the archive, a link, and a brief description. Thank you!
The Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more. Contains many sub-collections that have a more specific focus. Or just good for general browsing / foraging to see what turns up.
A few specific collections of interest:
Collection: Prelinger Archives : Free Movies : Free Download, Borrow and Streaming Focus: Industrial film, Educational film, Advertising, Home Movies
Hosted on Archive.org, but significant and large enough to merit listing separately.
Prelinger Archives was founded in 1983 by Rick Prelinger in New York City. Over the next twenty years, it grew into a collection of over 60,000 "ephemeral" (advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur) films. In 2002, the film collection was acquired by the Library of Congress, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. Prelinger Archives remains in existence, holding approximately 11,000 digitized and videotape titles (all originally derived from film) and a large collection of home movies, amateur and industrial films acquired since 2002. Its primary collection emphasis has turned toward home movies and amateur films, with approximately 17,000 items held as of Spring 2019. Its goal remains to collect, preserve, and facilitate access to films of historic significance that haven't been collected elsewhere. Included are films produced by and for many hundreds of important US corporations, nonprofit organizations, trade associations, community and interest groups, and educational institutions.
Collection focus: US historical footage, historic newsreels, military footage (but contains all kinds of other things).
The motion picture, sound, and video holdings include official U.S. Government records of permanent value and donated materials obtained from various sources. Not everything is digitized, but many things are, and you can set up your search to only show digitized films. A lot of material (i.e. anything produced by the government) is in the public domain.
SEARCH TIPS: Use “advanced search” to look for films that are digitized and hosted online: use any keywords to narrow down your search by subject; select "moving images" under "type of materials" menu; then select "available online" tab after your search results are listed to generate a list of films that are digitized and viewable online.
NARA also has a YouTube channel
I want to add this link, which is to the National Archive Digital Photography Collection, which contains links to other digital photography collections across the country. I think this is an amazing resource for historical documentaries and other projects that use still photography in their productions.
The collections focus on photography, art of cinema, technology and George Eastman’s legacy. All accessible online. The museum has also added tools for educators to include PDF instructions on how to make a flipbook, how to make a thaumatrope and phenakistoscope. Also their youtube channel provides historic photographic process series, past lectures and new tutorials.
Collection focus: Canadian film, Indigenous film, documentary, animation
Welcome to NFB.ca, the National Film Board of Canada's award-winning online Screening Room, featuring over 3,000 productions. Films on this site can be streamed free of charge, or downloaded for your personal use for a small fee. Our Collection includes documentaries, animations, experimental films, fiction and interactive works. We showcase films that take a stand on issues of global importance that matter to Canadians—stories about the environment, human rights, international conflict, the arts and more. We also have a selection of animated films for both adults and children from talented filmmakers such as Cordell Barker, Chris Landreth, Ryan Larkin, Richard Condie, Ishu Patel, Caroline Leaf, and others.
British Pathé hosts a collection of archived footage of major events, fashion trends, famous faces and more. It also represents the news agency Reuters, and their 120, 000+ historical news clips. Though licensing the footage is not free, licenses are priced according to the manner in which you want to use a clip, which opens up a range of options. One of the most useful features of their website is their ‘Archive Picks’, a selection of clips which they believe will be useful for contextualizing current events, illustrating trending topics, or which are relevant to important anniversaries.
BBC Archives manages one of the world's largest multimedia archives. Our mission is to preserve content so that it can be reused. Our vision is to have an open archive, fit for a digital world.
From home movies to documentaries, from industry to entertainment - the National Library of Scotland Moving Image Archive (formerly the Scottish Screen Archive) has something for everyone. Explore around 100 years of Scotland's history captured by amateur and professional film-makers. Here in the Moving Image Archive catalogue you will find details of thousands of films and videos held at the Library.
German History and its Digital Memory in Moving Images
The EYE collection dates back to 1946, when the first predecessor of EYE was founded: the Nederlands Historisch Filmarchief. In 1952, this became the Dutch Filmmuseum; since 2010 we are EYE. EYE also has a YouTube channel with lots of historic films
Includes the Jean Desmet collection - Desmet was one of the pioneering early cinema operators in the Netherlands, and he also documented and preserved almost everything that had to do with his business: not only bookkeeping and films, but also posters, advertisements, and memos. This resulted in an extraordinary archive, which received worldwide recognition in 2011 when UNESCO included it in its Memory of the World Register.
The Cinecittà Luce Historical Archive is one of the richest in the world, documenting the audiovisual memory of Italy and the Mediterranean in the twentieth century. Newsreels, documentaries, directories, photographs, an archive of contemporary life. A set of documentary productions that represent the "short century."
The Cineteca Italiana Foundation film archive is accessible to the public.
On www.filmarkivet.se you have the opportunity to see unique archival moving image material that otherwise are rarely accessed; mainly shorts, non-fiction films, news-reels and commercials; films that reflect the transformation of Swedish society over the last century.
(website text is only in Romanian for now! But film clips have English subtitling) Public-facing project to share state-sponsored documentaries produced during the Communist era in Romania.
Indiancine.ma is an annotated online archive of Indian film. It is intended to serve as a shared resource for film scholars and enthusiasts in India and beyond.Since 1931 to date, India has made around 50,000 sound films. Official figures suggest that around 4.4% of all films made exist in archival conditions. On the other hand, it is likely that low-end sector, including 16 mm, VHS, VCD and DVD, might have 15,000 sound films, i.e. 30%, across the Indian cinema’s history, and across regions.
Read about this channel here.
DPLA is the Digital Public Library of America. The others are collections from Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. This list was compiled for a found-image GIF competition sponsored by the archive consortium.
Collection focus: medicine, mental health, child development, public health, disease
The films and videos collection is a principal repository for biomedical moving images in the U.S. and around the world. The collection includes more than 8,000 cataloged films and video recordings from the early twentieth century through the present day. More than 900 titles date from before 1950. While most of the films are in English, there are important titles in German, Russian, French, and Spanish. The collection includes instructional and educational films, public health titles, commercial films with medical themes, public service announcements, histories of medicine on film, recordings of public lectures and ceremonies, and documentary footage of biomedical research.
The Library’s film, video and audio collection is one of the largest of its kind. It covers all aspects of medicine, health and welfare throughout the 20th century and beyond.
Collection focus: cinemicroscopy
The Roman Vishniac Film Collection comprises Vishniac's pioneering work in naturalist cinemicroscopy and photomicroscopy. It includes approximately 156,000 feet of motion picture film; more than 800 photographic negatives, slides, and prints; and paper records associated with these works. Film holdings include home movies and naturalist film experiments as well outtakes and working materials from the Living Biology film series. The bulk of the collection dates to the 1960s and 1970s, when Vishniac was producing microbiology films in New York City.
The Macaulay Library is the world’s premier scientific archive of natural history audio, video, and photographs. Although the Macaulay Library’s history is rooted in birds, the collection includes amphibians, fishes, and mammals, and the collection preserves recordings of each species’ behavior and natural history. Our mission is to facilitate the ability of others to collect and preserve such recordings and to actively promote the use of these recordings for diverse purposes spanning scientific research, education, conservation, and the arts.
The Royal Institution is an independent charity dedicated to connecting people with the world of science. The Bragg film archive is The Royal Institution's digitised archive of films relating to the Bragg family, their research, and the world of science at that time. (Includes amazing SOAP films!)
The films in this presentation, dating mainly from the 1950s, are a striking example of how mental illness—so often sensationalized in Hollywood features—could be handled with considerably more nuance and sensitivity when produced for educational and training purposes. Many of these films were intended for mental health professionals.
(https://mirc.sc.edu/ to search the collection by keyword)
The Moving Image Research Collections Digital Video Repository (MIRC-DVR) serves MIRC's preservation and access missions. It aims to engage researchers from all walks of life in the process of discovering, enjoying, and contributing to knowledge about the sounds and images it contains—all without adding wear and tear to the fragile originals in MIRC's care.
IU Libraries Moving Image Archive is one of the world’s largest educational film and video collections. With more than 130,000 items spanning nearly 80 years of film production, the Archive is a member of the distinguished International Federation of Film Archives, the world’s leading association for film preservation.
Housed at the University of Arizona, the American Indian Film Gallery (AIFG) is an online collection of more than 450 historic films by and about Native peoples of the Americas, compiled and digitized by historian J. Fred MacDonald over many years. These films range in date from 1925-2010. Most date to the so-called Golden Age of educational filmmaking, from 1945 to the rise of consumer-grade video equipment in the 1970s. Many of the films from that period were sponsored by industry or governmental agencies. Others were made by independent educational filmmakers. (Also look at the amazing Tribesourcing Film project that invites Indigenous people to create new voiceovers for films from this archive).
The Hugh M. Hefner Moving Image Archive is comprised of approximately 70,000 motion picture negatives, magnetic sound elements, release prints and a growing percentage of moving image materials in digital formats. The archive's collection of USC student and staff films provides a unique opportunity for current production students to study the works of USC alumni to find inspiration, renewed confidence and a sense of history. The student film collection houses both the original camera negative and release prints of many USC alumni who have become leaders in the film industry today, as well as the works of many other young filmmakers who are soon to make their distinctive marks on the motion picture and television industry. The archive also holds a research collection of commercial feature films, television programs, educational films and shorts to support the school's academic mission. Collections include: Motion Picture Technology Archive / USC Student Films / Theatrical and Educational Films / Special Collections (films) / Historical Photographs
The Penn Museum has an extensive collection of archival films (that have been digitized) and born-digital videos covering a range of archaeological and anthropological topics. More than 1,100 online resources can be browsed via their thumbnails below or by using the left navigation links to Archival Films, Lectures, Educational & Other, and Playlists or via the dropdown menu under Videos on the top navbar. Alternatively, this simple search function allows discovery via content available in the video and film titles.
The WLBT Newsfilm Collection (1954-1971) documents two decades of intense social and political change in Mississippi. It primarily consists of more than 520,000 linear feet (635 16mm reels) of black-and-white and color film footage from WLBT, the National Broadcasting Company’s affiliate in Jackson, Mississippi. The collection is made up of the "outtakes" of the film shot, not the segments that were broadcast on the news program. Some but not all of the reels have sound tracks. The collection also includes a few still photographs, reel-to-reel audio tapes, very early videotapes, and news scripts. [NAVIGATE TO DIGITAL ARCHIVES]
The Political TV Ad Archive collected and, using innovative open source technology, tracked airings of political ads in key markets the 2016 election cycle.
The African American Home Movie Archive (AAHMA) was created to serve as an online resource for researchers, educators, students, archive and library professionals, and other interested parties. The main feature of the website is the Black Home Movie Index, an aggregate of African American home movie collections from the early 1920s through the mid-1980s. Complete with collection names, scope and content, dates, links to online finding aids, video streaming links (if provided by the holding institution), and contact information for each participating institution, the virtual archive aims to serve as a liaison for African American home movie research by streamlining access to this information.
Several https://www.lareddelcinedomestico.com home movie projects of Spain.
Also: Home Movie Archives is another useful aggregation database for home movies and where to find them (though it doesn’t show you what is digitized and what isn’t).
The Museum’s Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive is one of the world’s most comprehensive informational and archival resources for moving image materials pertaining to the Holocaust and World War II. Staff continue to locate, acquire, preserve, and document historical film footage from sources throughout the United States and abroad. Unique original film collections and a wide range of videotape and digital formats are preserved and stored offsite in temperature and humidity-controlled vaults. The online catalog (film) includes descriptive information and streams thousands of digital video clips from the collection.
Hagley Museum and Library collects, preserves, and interprets the unfolding history of American enterprise. Hagley's collections document the interaction between business and the cultural, social, and political dimensions of our society from the late 18th century to the present. The library opened in 1961 and has been assisting authors, historians, filmmakers, genealogists, hobbyists, and an assortment of content producers for over half a century. We are recognized around the world as one of the preeminent institutions for the study of business history.
SEARCH TIP: To find digitized film material, do an advanced search and select “moving image” in the “type of resource” menu.
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A list from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Library
“Inspired by the example set by Alan Lomax, our mission is to stimulate cultural equity through preservation, research, and dissemination of the world's traditional music, and to reconnect people and communities with their creative heritage.”
Lots here, the Accents and Dialects audio collection is great. Also Environment and Sound Maps
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is an inclusive outreach tool designed to provide academics, archivists, artists, curators, educators, exhibitors, filmmakers, programmers, researchers and students with a user-friendly and centralized means of global discovery - interconnecting a disparate labyrinth of invaluable moving image catalogs, services, resources, websites and related information.
Other interesting found footage sources, not necessarily digital: local community archives can have amazing treasures (and can be extremely accessible / eager to work with filmmakers and researchers), US presidential libraries (in the public domain), Vanderbilt TV News Archive, which has been recording network news every day for decades (amazing / fascinating resource but not digitized for the public).
And, of course, all kinds of stuff is on YouTube, but you already knew that.
The Archives for Education and Make Film History projects make available over 200 films from the BFI National Archive, BBC Archive, Northern Ireland Screen Digital Film Archive, the Irish Film Institute and the London Community Video Archive for creative reuse by young filmmakers in schools, film training and higher education across the UK and Ireland.
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Great Resources for Public Domain, open source image and videos:
https://publicdomainreview.org/
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THANK YOU to everyone who contributed ideas and suggestions for the original list: Melissa Beeken, Noe Kidder, Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa, Adina Bradeanu, Regina Longo, Debra Schaffner, Leo Goldsmith, Brett Kashmere, Caio Simbula, Jenny Horne, Jennifer Peterson, Kelly Gallagher, Chrissy Guest, Joanna Wright plus a bunch of other generous anonymous Google doc editors!
Assembled by Irene Lusztig for UCSC FILM 171C, January 2020; editing permissions revised October 2022