LibGuides: FREN 399: French documentary & the essay film: Where to look: Streaming video

Video formats

Oberlin has a robust film collection intended to support our academic programs. The Oberlin College Libraries collect feature films, artist films, and documentaries in a variety of formats, seeking to balance longevity of access and expense with ease of access for current students.

Below, explore a list of databases which provide access to film in streaming video formats.

To learn more about discovering films in the collection (including DVD and Blu-Ray formats), see How to look: Video searches.

Databases: Streaming video

Academic Video Online
Streaming documentaries, films, and demonstrations on topics including anthropology, business, counseling, film, health, history, music, and more.
AP Archive
The film and video archive of the Associated Press is freely available on YouTube. The collection includes over 1.7 million global news and entertainment stories dating back to 1895.
Artifex Press
Digital catalogues raisonnés, which are definitive, comprehensive, and annotated compilations of all the known works of an artist. Catalogs are updated regularly for provenance, ownership, exhibition, literature, and publication history. Also includes documentary materials that round out artists’ work and life, such as essays, audio files, and time-lapse videos of artists explaining their techniques. Zoom technology allows viewers to examine art works in close detail, replicating the experience within a gallery.
Berliner Philharmoniker Digital Concert Hall
The Digital Concert Hall is the virtual concert venue of the Berliner Philharmoniker on the Internet. There are more than 30 broadcasts a year, and the site contains an archive of past performances. Note: Only 5 simultaneous users.
Bloomsbury Video Library
Filmed performances, fiction films, documentaries and instructional videos from the visual and performing arts, film, and history. Includes indie films and shorts, avant-garde performances, interviews with renowned writers, artists, choreographers, performers and practitioners, documentaries on an international range of themes, traditions, and historical figures. (1880-present)
Docuseek
New
Educational documentaries and fiction feature films curated to help students examine the issues related to social, ecological, political, and environmental justice around the world.
Drama Online
Best Bet
A digital library of plays (playtext, audio, video) from Aeschylus to the present day. Also includes critical analysis, contextual information, and reference information. Includes a particular focus on performances by L.A. Theater Works, National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, and The Globe.
Europeana
A digital library of images, texts, audio, and video from Europe's museums, archives, and libraries.
EUScreen
Thousands of video clips produced by a variety of European television stations throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, that provide context for Europe's history and culture. Clips include, for example, a German broadcast of the fall of the Berlin Wall, a 1972 Polish fashion show, Maria Callas performing in Paris in 1958, and advice about how young men ought to behave from a 1960s London charm school.
Feature Films for Education
Hundreds of streaming full-length feature films for educational instructional purposes. This collection focuses on both current and hard-to-find titles, including documentaries, literary adaptations, blockbusters, classics, environmental titles, foreign films, social issues, animation studies, Academy Award winners, and more.
Films on Demand
A streaming video collection that provides unlimited access to 300,000 video clips in numerous subject areas. Includes captioning with interactive and searchable transcripts on all titles, as well as instructions for embedding videos in learning management systems.
Food Studies Online Best Bet
Collection of archival content, visual ephemera, books, and videos that explore how food shapes the world around us. Key themes and disciplines with extensive coverage represented include: marketing and consumerism, production and technology, food history, food movements, culinary and food design, food and identity, health, policy, religion, sociology, anthropology, and history. (Coverage dates: 1900-present)
Hobbies & Crafts Reference Center
Offers detailed "how-to" instructions and creative ideas to meet the interests of virtually every hobby enthusiast. Full text is provided from leading hobby and craft magazines, including Bead & Button, Creative Knitting, FineScale Modeler, Quilter's World, and many more. Database features include: full text for more than 1,200 magazines and books; access to more than 720 videos; over 160 hobby profiles; more than 3,000 recipes from various health organizations.
Kanopy
Online videos include documentaries and feature films. Most films require a librarian to approve purchase before viewing. Further details on recent changes to Kanopy and a list of currently licensed Kanopy films are available on the Kanopy research guide.
Klassiki
Classic cinema from Russia, Ukraine, the Caucasus and Central Asia, including silent classics through to the Soviet era and into the 2010s. Note: You must email aes@oberlin.edu to sign up for an account before you can use the platform.
Library of Congress Digital Collections
Gateway to the Library of Congress's vast resources of digitized American historical materials. Comprising more than 9 million items that document U.S. history and culture, the content is organized into more than 100 thematic collections.
medici.tv
A classical music digital channel, offering a catalogue of 1,400 programmes in video-on-demand, as well as 100 live concerts each year.
Met Opera On Demand
More than 450 Met performances. Dozens of Live in HD productions, classic telecasts from the 1970s, '80s, '90s, and '00s, and hundreds of radio broadcasts dating back to 1936.
Naxos Video Library
A performing arts video library with operas, ballets, documentaries, live concerts, and musical tours of historic places.
Reproductive Physiology Animations
A collection of learning modules on human reproduction from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. The modules have animation, and some have sound.
SAGE Video Counseling & Psychotherapy Collection
Over 480 streaming videos on topics including counseling research methods, counseling setting/client groups, theory and approaches, counseling skills, and professional issues.
Small Business Reference Center
Offers a wide variety of information on small business and entrepreneurial subject areas, common business types, a help and advice section, and provides information on how to create business plans that lead to successful funding. Business videos provide critical information for business owners: interviews, 'lessons learned' features, lectures and 'how to' videos help foster success in all aspects of managing a business. A collection of state-specific resources supports the researcher with demographic data and other local information.
Summon
Searches more than 300 million items - books, scholarly articles, newspaper articles, data, digital audio, digital video, digital images, government documents and more. It draws from the library catalog (OBIS), many of the full text and article indexing databases, as well as digital repositories from colleges, universities, research centers, and other open-access archives on the web.
World Cinema Video Collection
Streaming feature films from Africa, America, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East, including films from the silent era, from the mid-20th century, as well as award-winning contemporary works.