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 273 Collections and/or Records:
Glimpses of Hispaniola
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 189
Scope and Contents
Santo Domingo, 1929-1930. The Angelo Heilprin Expedition to Santo Domingo was conducted under the auspices of the museum's Department of Herpetology and Experimental Biology. Its purpose was to collect and "fix" reptiles and amphibians in the field. The fixation process entails injecting a specimen with a paraffin solution that replaces the organism's water. Specimens prepared this way can be placed on exhibition with very little further treatment. This process was used in the field for the...
Dates:
1929-1930
Gorillas and apes
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 122
Scope and Contents
The program on gorillas and other apes begins with a film entitled Gorilla Bill, which is about Bill Said's methods of capturing a gorilla (shown previously on March 27, 1955). After this film material is presented, a remote broadcast from the Bronx Zoo (i.e. New York Zoological Park) features Charles Collingwood interviewing Richard Mandel, curator of mammals, about the lives of gorillas and other apes in the wild and in captivity. Chimpanzees perform tricks as Mandel discusses their...
Dates:
1956
Gorillas ; From the neck up
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 35
Scope and Contents
SEGMENT 1: Gorillas. This segment opens with footage from the 1949 movie Mighty Joe Young (RKO Pictures), which is presented as an example of the traditional portrayal of gorillas as ferocious. At the CBS studio, James Howard McGregor, research associate at the AMNH and a noted expert on gorillas, discusses historical and characteristic aspects of gorillas. At the Baltimore Zoo by remote broadcast, Arthur Watson and host Robert Northshield play with Robert, a rambunctious...
Dates:
1953
Greenland musk oxen
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 190
Scope and Contents
This short film is all that remains of an expedition film called North Iceland and Northeast Greenland made by John K. Howard, an AMNH patron. In it is pictured the Isfjord, the Frand Joseph fjord, the Nordenskjold glacier, icebergs, waterfalls at Geology fjord, and of particular interest, the musk oxen at Eleonore Bay and Ymer Island. The expedition's dog torments the animals, so they charge the intruder. In a lovely sequence, a worried cow protects her two young calves by fending off the...
Dates:
[1934]
Guatemala, land of the Maya
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 180
Scope and Contents
The informative narrative and lengthy, detailed scenes make this travel film useful for research. The film surveys many aspects of Guatemala. The film opens with views of a complex of Mayan ruins near Tikal, its temples, plazas, causeways, ball courts, palaces, bas-reliefs of great masks, stelae and altars, and the surrounding jungle with its ceiba, guanacaste, and mahogany trees. At the Dyers' jungle camp near a waterway, the party fishes for dinner. Howler monkeys, parrots, and a column of...
Dates:
1970
Headhunters of South America
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 125
Scope and Contents
Edward Moffat Weyer, editor of Natural History magazine and an anthropologist, and Harry Tschopik, AMNH ethnologist, are guest anthropologists on this broadcast about two groups of Indians. The Chavante (i.e. Shavante) and Jivaro Indians, who live in the Amazon region of South America, have been the subject of some scrutiny following the recent massacre of five American missionaries by the Auca Indians in Ecuador. Excerpts from Tschopik's film Men of the Montana, Weyer's film on the Chavante...
Dates:
1956
High Arctic
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 191
Scope and Contents
This film begins in Ottawa at the headquarters of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. While there, a Mountie officer convinces Lewis Cotlow, producer and director of this film, to make a motion picture about the Eskimos of the high Arctic. The film shows Cotlow and his film crew setting out on board an official Mountie airplane named the Otter. The next sequence is a series of aerial views depicting the topography of the far north. Included is a beautiful shot of a pod of white beluga whales...
Dates:
1962-1963
Hinduism
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 105
Scope and Contents
The second segment in a three-part series on religion discusses Hinduism. The three stages of life of the average Hindu are examined: confirmation and preparation; discharge obligations; and in old age renouncing life and attempting to reach Brahman and rebirth. Shanta Rao, India's foremost classical dancer, performs ritual dances that are part of the religious Hindu observance. Filmed material includes Indians praying, making pottery, sewing, harvesting, and celebrating. G. L. Mehta, Indian...
Dates:
1955
History of life #4
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 64
Scope and Contents
The Rise of the Mammal is the fourth program in a special series on the Adventure series. George Gaylord Simpson, AMNH paleontologist and author of The Meaning of Evolution, and Edwin Harris Colbert, curator of fossil amphibians and reptiles at the museum, discuss the emergence of the mammal as a dominant form of life on earth. The program reviews the diversification found in the mammal class, as well as locomotive and adaptation characteristics. The evolution of the horse is examined...
Dates:
1954
History of life on earth #1
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 45
Scope and Contents
This is the first of a series of four broadcasts on the history of life on earth. George Gaylord Simpson, AMNH paleontologist, and Norman Dennis Newell of the Department of Fossil Invertebrates discuss the history of life and man's place in it. The program begins with electron microscope views of single-celled organisms and includes a discussion of fossils and a film entitled Birth of a Baby, produced by the Association of Medical Colleges and George Washington University. The Simplest...
Dates:
1953
American Museum of Natural History
Museum Archives at the Gottesman Research Library
200 Central Park West
New York, NY 10024-5192