Public Domain Movies

Dances of the Kwakiutl (1951)
Running Time: 8 mins Black & White

The Kwakiutl are a tribe closesly related to the Nootka people on the North Western Coast. Their art and ceremonies .

First Americans Past and Present (1927)
Running Time: 8 mins Color

An overview of Native Americans, which attempts to be amusing by referring to pop culture of the late 1920s (e.g., mentioning the popular film "IT" and comparing a burro to a "Tin Lizzie"). Silent.

Golden Twenties (1920s,1950)
Running Time: 66 mins Color

Feature-length compilation of 1920s newsreel footage, with commentary about news, sports, lifestyles, and historical figures. The fabulous decade when we came of age!

Island of Hope - Island of Tears (1989)
Running Time: 28 mins Color
Starring: Gene Hackman
This documentary covers the single largest migration of immigrants to Ellis Island between 1890 and 1920.

It's a Revolution, Mother (1968)


Footage of teen riots on Sunset - but they're notable primarily for their dearth of riotousness. The coverage switches to the biker societies then emerging into their prime, and uses voiceover narrative from one of the bikers to provide a sort of home movie view of their travails. This bits worthwhile for its pathetic glimpse, even if it does recycle some footage of bikers public urination efforts once or twice more than we needed along the way. The film's deskbound experts also offer only anaesthetic commentary, in effect trying to use a 'white coater' approach to a sociological expose

Life in the Thirties )
Running Time: ## mins B/C

Description Coming Soon

Puerto Rico - Its Past, Present and Promise (1965)
Running Time: 19 mins Color

This film describes how Puerto Rico, with too many people and too few resources, created an industrial economy and emerged from colonial rule to self - government. Governor Luis Muņos Marin here decsribes his "Operation Bootstrap" program, interviewed on-camera with director Bill Deneen. The script was written by noted novelist and screenwriter Elmore Leonard.

The Birth of the Star Spangled Banner (1914)
Running Time: 30 mins Black & White
Starring: Augustus Phillips, Ben F. Wilson, Charles Sutton
Video from Library of Congress telling the story of Francis Scott Key's poem and its War of 1812 origins. The new song is sung by the actors at film's end, "conducted" by the actor playing Key: the challenge is timing the tempo of the on-screen music to fit with the intervening intertitles.

We Heard the Bells - The Influenza of 1918 (2010)
Running Time: 57 mins Black & White
Starring: S. Epatha Merkerson, Don Hagan
We meet individuals from marginalized communities who describe what it was like to live through the 1918 flu pandemic. Their experiences raise questions about the pandemic: why did it kill so many people? Why were so many of the dead young adults? Where did this lethal flu come from? How can we keep a pandemic like that from occurring again? The film follows the search for answers from an expedition to Alaska in 1951 to collect tissue from bodies buried in the permafrost, to the scientists and epidemiologists working on the same questions today. It explains the relevance of research into the 1918 pandemic to the threat of current and future flu pandemics.