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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.
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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.
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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.
Browse Selected Films
Modernism (Academic Video Online)
Sister Wendy visits the world's art galleries to tell the history of painting. Even the most familiar of paintings take on a vivid new lease of life when viewed through this art enthusiast's eyes. In this episode, she discusses Modernism and the Modernists.
American Masters: Rothko: Pictures Must Be Miraculous (streaming, Academic Video Online)
Painter Mark Rothko is one of the most renowned figures of the Abstract Expressionist movement. This film explores Rothko’s journey and includes interviews with his children, Academy Award-nominated writer John Logan, and many others.
Biography: Jackson Pollock (streaming, Academic Video Online)
This episode of Biography paints a portrait of abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock, a pioneer of the action painting technique.
Roy Lichtenstein (streaming, Academic Video Online)
Blondes, superheroes and Mickey Mouse – with his drastically enlarged comic subjects, Lichtenstein caused a commotion in the art world of the 1960s. In 1964, a New York Times headline read: “One of the Worst Artists in America.“ Since then, the American artist who died in 1997 has come to rank as one of the greatest icons of pop art next to Andy Warhol.
Jackson Pollock (streaming, Academic Video Online)
In 1956, the Time Magazine mockingly called one of America’s most important 20th century artists “Jack the Dripper". It did so because Pollock stood for something new: With his innovative technique of “dripping“ and “pouring“ paint, he originated Action painting, and created radical, subjective works, which revolutionised the world of art. Pollock, however, also typified the image of the drunken artist in search of meaning, who became a legend as a result of his premature death. Kim Evans portrays the myth of Pollock, whose abstract painting was celebrated by the media as the quintessential American art form.
Africa Avant Garde series (streaming, Academic Video Online)
Africa Avant Garde focuses on contemporary art, attending two of the continent's most respected fairs and talking to the most influential people in the sector.
Malcolm Morley: The Outsider (streaming, Academic Video Online)
“It’s not a natural desire to be a modern artist”. - Malcolm Morley. In 1984, Malcolm Morley was the first winner of the Tate Gallery’s prestigious award, the Turner Prize, for the year’s major contribution to British art. It came as something of a surprise because he has always been, by his own volition, an outsider who remains aloof from the art world.
Kandinsky (streaming, Academic Video Online)
Colour, form, area – this is the formula of the greatest pioneer of abstract painting. Kandinsky came to art late in life, but his impact through Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) and Bauhaus paved the way for modern art. In 1913, he created one of the first abstract pictures, the theoretical basis of which was inspired by his essay Über das Geistige in der Kunst (On the Spiritual in Art). Accompanied by Mussorgsky's Pictures From An Exhibition Labarthe goes on a sensual journey which makes the soul resound with colours and forms. 'A picture has to resound and must be bathed in an inner glow.' Kandinsky
The Art of Henry Moore (streaming, Academic Video Online)
The Art of Henry Moore aims to rediscover the artist by returning to the works themselves - his sculptures, drawings and graphics - and to Moore's own thoughts about them.
The Art of Barbara Hepworth (streaming, Academic Video Online)
This revealing and complex exploration of Barbara Hepworth's work features her naturalistic carvings of the 1920s and increasingly abstract sculptures of the 1930s, the ambitious post-war works in wood, stone and bronze, her monumental public commissions and the strikingly diverse creations of her final years.
Art Index TV series (streaming, Academic Video Online)
Art Index TV is an interview-style television show that engages key players who inform the business and practice of contemporary art.
Art 21: Art in the Twenty-First Century series (streaming, Academic Video Online)
The only series on television in the U.S. to focus exclusively on contemporary visual art and artists, Art in the Twenty-First Century is a Peabody Award-winning biennial program that allows viewers to observe the artists at work, watch as they transform inspiration into art, and hear how they struggle with both the physical and visual challenges of achieving their visions.
On China. Contemporary Chinese Art (Academic Video Online)
Chinese Dissident Artist Ai Weiwei famously said, "The Chinese art world does not exist." In a country known for censorship and control, On China explores whether contemporary art has the freedom to be authentic in China.
Spirit of the Time: the World of Chinese Contemporary Art series (Academic Video Online)
They produce works that have reverberated round the world. From Beijing to Yunnan, a group of artists - variously called contemporary or avant-garde - are painting, sculpting, photographing, and installing images of China as they see it.
The Art of France: This is the Modern World (streaming, Academic Video Online)
The Art of France reads the nation’s history and character in its sculptures, paintings and palaces. From the art of absolute power in the 18th century through to the modern philosophies bound up in impressionism, art and history are merged to enlightening effect.
The Truth about Contemporary Art (streaming, Academic Video Online)
Discover what contemporary art is made of. We define the dispositive surrounding contemporary works that sometimes challenge the viewer by bringing public activism and politics.
