Film Collection
Subject
Subject Source: Local sources
Scope Note: Distinguishes audiovisual material in the Library that are part of the 1987 Cataloged Film Collection created under the direction of Nina Root.
Found in 274 Collections and/or Records:
The Viking
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 286
Scope and Contents
The Viking is an epic of the Newfoundland sealers including a melodramatic love subplot. The love triangle is the story of two sealers, Luke and Jed, who love the same woman. The main theme of the film is the life and work of sealers, including techniques for freeing the ship from the ice. Men are seen on the ice trying to free the ship by dynamiting the ice floes. The men jump from ice block to ice block and use their coats as sails to propel the ice. There are scenes of vast expanses of...
Dates:
1931
The William D. Campbell African Expedition
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 290
Scope and Contents
Filmed during the AMNH William D. Campbell African Expedition, 1938. The objective of the AMNH William D. Campbell African Expedition was to collect specimens for the okapi and Nile groups in the AMNH Akeley Hall of African Mammals. The expedition party traveled through Kenya, Uganda, Zaire, and the Sudan, under the leadership of William Durant Campbell, field associate of the AMNH Department of Mammalogy. The staff included Major W. V. D. Dickenson, a white hunter for MGM's movie Trader...
Dates:
1938
The witch doctor
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 291
Scope and Contents
This film takes place in Indonesia where native homes and various activities including spinning, weaving, goldsmithing, and cooking are pictured. A sick man is treated by the witch doctor: a strand of the patient's hair is attached to a palm leaf, then a suckling pig is sacrificed and its snout offered to the gods. The patient is then anointed with the pig's blood and the cure is complete. Depicted is the restraining of young men and the filing down of their teeth. Ritual dances and a...
Dates:
1928
To Lhasa and Shigatse
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 166
Scope and Contents
Filmed during the Vernay-Cutting Expedition to Tibet, 1935. The Vernay-Cutting expedition to Tibet was co-led by Charles Suydam Cutting and Arthur Stannard Vernay, another AMNH trustee. Its purpose was to collect ethnological objects for the AMNH and botanical specimens for the Kew Gardens in England. At first, a map of the expedition route and a diagram of the elevations of the Himalayas are shown. The film starts in the area surrounding Gyantse, Tibet, and the town itself, with its stone...
Dates:
1935
Travels through the northern frontier district of Kenya
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 184
Scope and Contents
Here the Dyers provide us with brief portraits of the various tribes and wildlife that inhabit the region on Kenya's northern border. The nomadic Rendile tend their dromedaries, and pour water into wooden troughs. Gurnee Dyer graciously accepts and drinks a blend of cattle blood and milk from the Samburu, another pastoral people. Among the areas visited are Lake Rudolf, a nearby ancient gravesite, and the desert beds of Chalbi and Kaisuti. Also filmed are an encounter with Gabbra men, and...
Dates:
1973
Trip through space ; Life in a garden ; Tuna fishermen
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 25
Scope and Contents
SEGMENT 1: Trip Through Space. Man in space and what he would find on a journey through the universe is the topic of this first segment. Frank H. Forrester and Joseph M. Chamberlain, astronomers at the AMNH-Hayden Planetarium, are introduced alongside the Zeiss projector at the planetarium. With the help of film and rear-view projectors the audience is shown planets and stars while Chamberlain discusses verified scientific facts about space travel. SEGMENT 2: Life in a Garden. Richard H....
Dates:
1953
Trip to South Africa
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 282
Scope and Contents
Filmed during the AMNH Gregory-Hellman Transvaal Expedition, 1938. This film was made by William King Gregory, of the AMNH Department of Comparative and Human Anatomy, on the AMNH Gregory-Hellman Transvaal Expedition. Gregory and Milo Hellman, AMNH anthropologist), went to Transvaal to study the dentition of Australopithecus transvaalensis, fossil hominids, in the field near Johannesburg. They had been invited there by Robert Broom, a paleontologist at the Transvaal Museum, the discoverer of...
Dates:
1938
Turkana
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 228
Scope and Contents
Filmed during the AMNH Morden African Expedition, 1947. AMNH anthropologist Ralph Kepler Lewis made this documentary of the Turkana people during the Morden African Expedition of 1947, led by co-leaders William James Morden and Irene Morden. En route to the desolate Lodwar area in Kenya where the Turkanas live, Lewis recorded some of the scenery and people of Uganda and Kenya. Near Tamkal, Uganda, West Suk people drive their goats, and a little further on in a Karamojang village near Moroto,...
Dates:
1947-1948
Visual recording of speech ; Bali
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 67
Scope and Contents
SEGMENT 1: Visual Recording of Speech. This segment examines new technological advances in the visual recording of speech. In a remote broadcast from the Haskins Laboratory in New York, Frank Cooper, Alvin Lieberman and Pierre de Lattre demonstrate the simplified common patterns which make it possible to hear and understand the sounds of speech. A sound spectograph and a filmed x-ray of people speaking are displayed. SEGMENT 2: Bali. Dr. Sudjarwo, Indonesian delegate to the United Nations,...
Dates:
1954
Voodoo
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 123
Scope and Contents
The origin and history of voodoo is the topic of discussion for this broadcast. Illustrated through a performance by the Haitian dancer Jean Ľon Destine and his dance group with drums and singing dancers, the discussion explores the various meanings of voodoo as a religion and ritual. The word voodoo is derived from the word vodun, a god or spirit in the Fon language of Dahomey (now Benin).
Dates:
1956
American Museum of Natural History
Museum Archives at the Gottesman Research Library
200 Central Park West
New York, NY 10024-5192