Subject Guides: Ethnographies: Streaming videos

Academic Video Resources for Ethnographies

Black Studies in Video This link opens in a new window
Black Studies in Video features award-winning documentaries, newsreels, interviews and archival footage surveying the evolution of black culture in the United States. In partnership with California Newsreel, the database provides unique access to their African American Classics collection, and includes films covering history, politics, art and culture, family structure, social and economic pressures, and gender relations.
Ethnographic Video Online: Volumes I, II, III & IV This link opens in a new window
Ethnographic Video Online is a comprehensive online resource for the study of human culture, behavior and society around the world. The collections contain over 1,300 hours of streaming video, including ethnographic films, documentaries, select feature films, and previously unpublished fieldwork. It’s also a resource for a study of the discipline itself: By placing examples of traditional ethnographic methodologies alongside indigenous-made films representing previously overlooked perspectives, scholars, teachers and students of anthropology can gain a sense of the discipline’s history and of its future direction.
Films on Demand This link opens in a new window
Streaming educational videos in the humanities, social sciences, education, business and the arts from publishers such as Films for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Cambridge, and Meridian.
Latin America in Video This link opens in a new window
Latin America in Video offers quality original language documentaries from some of the most important producers and independent filmmakers in Latin America. The films were produced in Latin America, by Latin Americans, about Latin American issues, such as cultural identity, political history, human rights, popular culture, agribusiness, education, religion, and much more.

I am a Sufi, I am a Muslim
This program introduces Sufism, a branch of Islam which is much less well known in the West than some of the more fundamentalist forms which are frequently in the news.
Nanook of the North
In what is often considered the very first documentary film, Robert Flaherty recorded the daily life of Nanook the Inuk hunter and his family living in the harsh conditions of Canada's Hudson Bay region. Essential viewing for students of anthropology and film, Nanook of the North raises many questions about truth, storytelling, and culture.
Nanook Revised
Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North created the very genre of film documentary, with its documentation of Nanook the Inuit and the Eskimo traditions which were even then being threatened by the influences of whites. This program revisits the site of Flaherty's filming, and learns that he staged much of what he filmed, sired children to whose future he paid no heed, and is himself now part of Inuit myth.
Seasons of the Navajo
This classic anthropological study of a traditional Navajo family, the Neboyias, examines their lifestyle through the four seasons as they travel to each of their hogans-planting, sheepherding, harvesting, and weaving.
Spirits of the rocks: The culture of San Bushpeople
The extraordinary rock paintings of the San bushpeople provide a culturally rich point of reconnection with humankind's collective past. In this program, anthropologists Patricia Vinnicombe-author of the groundbreaking book People of the Eland-and Frans Prins as well as Megan Biesele, cofounder of the Kalahari Peoples Fund, take part in an ethnographic sojourn with the San in South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia. To better understand this venerable indigenous people, they immerse themselves in their culture, partaking of their art, myths, beliefs, rituals, and healing dance.

Other Video Resources

American Indian Film Gallery
Contains 450 films about, or by, Native Americans. It is maintained by the University of Arizona. The original films are preserved by the Library of Congress.
EVIA Digital Archive: Ethnographic Video for Instruction and Analysis
Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and supported by the Indiana University and the University of Michigan. Makes freely available ethnographic field videos, the bulk of which are on music. A personal account must be created using Hofstra University email and from a Hofstra University computer in order to initially authenticate our IP address. Afterward the website should be accessible from other locations.