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Research Guides

Cinema Studies

Contributions

Freely Available Resources for Cinema Studies

Many thanks to Philip Bardach (MI 2018) for his contributions to research and compiling these resources. 

Online Films for Viewing (Open Access)

British Pathé Digital Collections 

  • Films and still photographs from the entire archive of 90,000 videos covering newsreel, sports footage, social history documentaries, entertainment and music stories from 1896 to 1976.

BFI Player - Free Archive Collections 

Colonial Film: Moving Images of the British Empire 

  • This website holds detailed information on over 6000 films showing images of life in the British colonies.
  • Over 150 films are available for viewing online. You can search or browse for films by country, date, topic, or keyword.

European Film Gateway 

  • This portal is a single access point to films, images and text from selected digital collections of 38 film archives across Europe. Items include photos, posters, programes, periodicals, censorship documents, rare feature and documentary films, newsreels, and other materials. 

Internet Archive - Moving Image Archive

  • The Internet Archive's Moving Images Library has free movies, films, and videos. This library contains thousands of digital movies uploaded by Internet Archive users which range from classic full-length films, to daily alternative news broadcasts, to cartoons and concerts.
  • Many of these videos are available for free download. Check the Moving Image Archive FAQ for more information.

Library of Congress - Researchers Moving Images Research Center - Digital Moving Image Collections 

  • Several hundred early motion pictures are viewable in the Library of Congress' American Memory Collections. 

National Film Board of Canada 

  • Enjoy documentaries, animations, alternative dramas and interactive productions on the web, on your personalized home page, or on your iPhone. 
  • Please be aware that UofT users have access to additional films through UofT Libraries 

NZ Online

  • Online showcase of New Zealand television, educational, nature, documentaries, films, short films and music videos with over 3,000 titles.

OpenCulture.com - Films

  • Open Culture is a website focused on open access resources. The film section has a list of links to online films organized by categories including: Comedy & Drama, Film Noir, Horror, Westerns, Martial Arts Movies, Silent Films, Documentaries, and Animation. There are also special collections of Oscar Winning Films and works by Andrei Tarkovsky and Charlie Chaplin. 

Public Domain Review. 

  • These curated collections of images, books, audio and film shine a light on curiosities and wonders from a wide range of online archives.

UbuWeb Film & Video

  • Hundreds of avant-garde films and videos for viewing online 

Film Reviews (Open Access)

Primary Source Materials (Open Access)

eBooks (Open Access)

Article Databases - scholarly journals (Open Access)

Film eJournals (Open Access)