Related Guides
Film & Sound Databases & Catalogs
- Ethnographic Video Online, Volume I-II: Foundational Films This link opens in a new window Ethnographic Video Online, Vol. I-II: Foundational Films contains classic and contemporary ethnographies, documentaries and shorts from every continent, providing teachers visual support to introduce and contextualize hundreds of cultural groups and practices around the world.
- Ethnographic Video Online, Volume III: Indigenous Voices This link opens in a new window Ethnographic Video Online, Vol. III: Indigenous Voices contains documentaries, feature films and shorts made by and for indigenous people and communities. Topics are simultaneously local and global, with particular emphasis on the human effects of climate change, sustainability, indigenous and local ways of interpreting history, cultural change, and traditional knowledge and storytelling.
- Ethnographic Video Online, Volume IV: Festivals and Archives This link opens in a new window Ethnographic Video Online, Vol. IV: Festivals and Archives contains award-winning titles from contemporary ethnographic film festivals. The collection also includes field recordings and edited films by students and faculty from universities and institutions around the world, including Berkeley Media and Manchester's Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology.
- Ethnographic Video Online, Royal Anthropological Institute Teaching Edition This link opens in a new window Ethnographic Video Online, Royal Anthropological Institute Teaching Edition contains a curriculum-aligned collection of videos and segments curated to support the teaching of introductory anthropology courses. Each video and segment within this collection are accompanied by a teaching guide providing background information, lesson plans, and classroom exercises and activities.
- Ethnographic Sound Archives Online This link opens in a new window Ethnographic Sound Archives Online brings together over 2,000 hours of previously unpublished historic field recordings from around the world, alongside their supporting field notes and ethnographers' metadata, opening new paths for the study of music in its cultural context.
- Ethnomusicology: Global Field Recordings (AM Explorer) Delve into the cultural study of music and explore content from across the globe with this diverse and comprehensive collection. Produced in collaboration with the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive, the material in this collection includes thousands of audio field recordings and interviews, educational recordings, film footage, field notebooks, slides, correspondence and ephemera from over 60 fields of study.
- Academic Video Online This link opens in a new window Academic Video Online delivers more than 67,000 titles spanning a range of subject areas including anthropology, business, counseling, film, health, history, music, and more. It includes documentaries, films, demonstrations, and other content types. Films in the Boston University Libraries catalog are licensed to Boston University for educational and research use only, for BU students, faculty, and staff.
- Kanopy This link opens in a new window Kanopy is a provider of documentaries, training films, and theatrical releases available as streaming video. Clips from the videos can be embedded in presentations or shown in class. Films in the Boston University Libraries catalog are licensed to Boston University for educational and research use only, for BU students, faculty, and staff.
- Centre of South Asian Studies: Films (University of Cambridge) The Centre holds a sizable archive of films – approximately 50 individual collections totalling in the region of 80 hours of footage. Most of the material we hold is 16mm or 8mm home movies, taken between 1911 and 1956. The film collection is now available online in its entirety (with one or two omissions for copyright purposes).
- Penn Museum Anthropological and Archaeological Films (University of Pennsylvania) In its 120-year history, the University of Pennsylvania Museum has collected nearly one million objects, many obtained directly through its own field excavations or anthropological research. This collection on the Internet Archive represents a portion of the motion picture film collection housed at the Museum.
- Canada's Diverse Cultures, National Film Board of Canada) The first films on cultural communities in Canada were made at the NFB in the 1940s. They seem quaint to us today, concentrating on ancestral customs, religious beliefs, crafts, dress and traditional dance and music. The films say nothing about what drove these people to move here or what difficulties they faced, and consisting as they do of narration and music, they give no voice to the communities they represent. These films wanted to show that Canada was an open and tolerant country where many cultures could co-exist. They also underline the concept of citizenship, recalling that despite their differences, immigrants were Canadian citizens, had espoused the values of their new country and spoke one of the two official languages. By the late 1950s the advent of light portable cameras and synchronous sound equipment meant that NFB filmmakers had a great deal of freedom in filming their subjects. Synchronous sound also meant that the subjects in the films could themselves speak on camera in a more spontaneous fashion. The people of these cultural communities would be allowed to speak about their experiences but, on seeing the films today, we sense that the filmmakers (who are Francophone or Anglophone and not members of the cultural community) want to interpret for us what is being presented. In 1971 the Canadian Secretary of State announced a new policy of support to all cultures and ethnic groups in Canada to help break down discriminatory attitudes and cultural conflicts. In response to this policy, the National Film Board implemented a Multicultural program in August 1972 aimed at acquainting Canada’s ethnic groups with NFB movies versioned in their own languages. One hundred sixty-five films were versioned into 19 languages and made available. Filmmakers from the various cultural groups were brought in and encouraged to make films about their communities. It was no longer a member of the dominant group casting an eye on these groups but someone from the community who explored the challenges and benefits of integration into mainstream Canadian culture. In this way, we were shown the immigrant experience in Canada through the eyes of those who lived it.
- The Aboriginal Voice: The National Film Board and Aboriginal Filmmaking Through the Years Through its singular and long-standing commitment to Aboriginal filmmaking, the National Film Board has been instrumental in providing Canadians a rich cultural resource and legacy: a comprehensive body of films inviting us all to share in the Aboriginal experience. Throughout the course of a number of NFB initiatives, the Aboriginal Voice has evolved.
- BU Libraries Search (BULS) This link opens in a new window BU Libraries Search provides a single place to search for a wide variety of academic material provided by the library. The material covered by the search includes books, journals, scores, video and audio recordings, and other physical items held by the library. The search also covers ebooks and ejournals owned by the library, as well as online material provided by the library from a variety of sources.
Selected Films
- In and Out of Africa (streaming, Academic Video Online) This extraordinary documentary is one of the most intelligent, perceptive, and engaging films ever made on African culture and art. It explores with irony and humor issues of authenticity, taste, and racial politics in the transnational trade in African art.
- Witchcraft among the Azande (streaming, Academic Video Online) This documentary analyzes the role of witchcraft among the Azande people of central Africa, who considered it to be a major danger. They believe that witchcraft can be inherited and that a person can be a witch without realizing her or his bad influence.
- First Contact (streaming, Academic Video Online) This is the classic film of cultural confrontation that is as compelling today as when it was first released over 20 years ago.
- Coming of Age, Margaret Mead (1901-1978) (streaming, Academic Video Online) The most widely read, and best known anthropologist is probably Margaret Mead, an American who went study adolescence in the South Sea-Islands at the age of 23. Although her fieldwork has been criticised, she was nevertheless one of the foremost fieldworkers of her day. In America, Bali and New Guinea she examined child development, sex and temperament to see what role society has in making people what they are. Adolescence was a time of emotional stress and personal conflict in America and Europe. Mead claimed that in Samoa, adolescence was in many ways the most enjoyable and happy time of life.
- Dead Birds (streaming, Academic Video Online) Describes a photographic and ethnographic study which was sponsored by the Peabody Museum from Feb. 1961 to Nov. 1963 of the Dani, a people dwelling in the Grand Valley of the Baliem, high in the mountains of West New Guinea.
- The Kalasha Rites of Spring (streaming, Ethnographic Video Online) The Kalasha are a tribal people, 3,000 strong, who live in the high valleys of the Hindu Kush mountains in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan. The Kalasha are unique as a pagan people in this Islamic Republic. Joshi, their three day festival of song and dance, rituals and sacrifice and the re-telling of legends celebrates the coming of spring and encourages chivalrous romance between the sexes. All this provides a colourful focus for this film which explores the life and customs of the Kalasha.
- Forbidden Rites: Cannibalism (streaming, Ethnographic Video Online) The history of cannibalism around the world and its role in different culture, from ancient Britain to Papua New Guinea.
- The Trobriand Islanders (streaming, Academic Video Online) The Trobriand Islands, regarded as anthropology's most sacred place, lie off the eastern tip of Papua New Guinea. The island society has a complex balance of male authority and female wealth. Magic spells and sorcery pervade everyday life. This program focuses on two important events: the distribution of women's wealth after a death, and the "month of play", a time of celebration following the yam harvest.
Podcasts
- AnthroPod AnthroPod is the podcast of the Society for Cultural Anthropology, and is produced by a collaborative, nonhierarchical collective of Contributing Editors.
- A Story of Us The mission of the A Story of Us podcast is to increase public understanding and access to the field of anthropology.
- This Anthro Life This Anthro Life brings you smart conversations with humanity’s top makers and minds to make sense of it all.
- American Anthropological Association: Speaking of Race In this first-of-its-kind trans-disciplinary podcast, biological anthropologist Jim Bindon joins with cultural anthropologist Lesley Jo Weaver and historian of science Erik L. Peterson to explore our species' centuries long debates over how to define biological and behavioral difference, and why it continues to matter today.
