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:
Museum centennial
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 231
Scope and Contents
Filmed as an episode of the television show New York Illustrated, Museum Centennial focuses on the centennial anniversary of the American Museum of Natural History. Mary Lindsay, wife of the then Mayor of New York, hosts. Shown in the film are a school group at the skeleton of Apatosaurus (then named Brontosaurus) and various museum exhibition halls. Discussions with museum curators provide interesting historical background to several of these. Richard Van Gelder, Department of Mammals,...
Dates:
1969
Musicale of primitive instruments
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 85
Scope and Contents
Willard Rhodes, Columbia University anthropologist specializing in musicology, discusses numerous musical instruments from the AMNH collection. Dancers appear on a large keyboard set to illustrate Rhodes's concepts concerning primitive music. A group of musicians give a music performance with a score especially created for this program by Samuel Barber, noted composer and Pulitzer Prize winner, using nose flutes, water gongs, a Congo piano, and other exotic and aboriginal musical instruments...
Dates:
1954
Mutiny on the Bounty ; Otters ; The story of oil
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 31
Scope and Contents
SEGMENT 1: Mutiny on the Bounty. On April 28, 1789, a mutiny occured on the H.M.S. Bounty, resulting in a unique intermingling of Tahitian and English culture on Pitcairn Island in the South Pacific. Harry L. Shapiro, AMNH anthropologist, explains the ethnological characteristics of the Pitcairn Islanders, the descendants of English crewmen and Tahitian women. This segment is hosted by Charles Collingwood. SEGMENT 2: Otters. This segment provides the audience with live and filmed views of...
Dates:
1953
Nanook of the north
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 232
Scope and Contents
Often considered the "father" of the naturalistic documentary, Nanook of the North was made in 1922 by Robert Flaherty. The museum acquired two prints and 25,000 feet of outtakes of the film from its producer, Revillon Fr̈res, at Flaherty's request; in 1967, the outtakes were given to the Museum of Modern Art. Nanook of the North is a portrait of an Eskimo family's struggle for survival. Flaherty's objective was to illustrate the manner in which the Eskimo lived before the influence of white...
Dates:
1922
Nature's side show
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 239
Scope and Contents
Filmed during the Finley Expedition to Arizona, 1925. This film was taken during the 1925 Finley Expedition to Arizona, near the Tucson Mountains. The actual "side show" is preceded by footage of various animals found in the area: a horned lizard, a gila monster, a fox, a prairie dog, a peccary, jackrabbits, cactus wrens, and mourning doves. A family of ground squirrels is also shown, one of whom is seen eating a grasshopper. The next sequence, one of the "side shows," involves the eating...
Dates:
1925
Navajo Indians
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 46
Scope and Contents
The cultural conflict resulting from differences in the basic way of life of the Navajo Indian and the white man in America, is discussed in detail on this program. Hosted by Charles Collingwood and Adventure science reporter, Robert Northshield, the program is enhanced by the expertise of Clyde Kluckhorn, chairman of Harvard University's Department of Anthropology and a leading authority on the Navajos. Paul Curtis and the American Mime Theatre act out pantomime interpretations of the...
Dates:
1953
New Mexican descendants of conquistadores
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 106
Scope and Contents
This broadcast discusses the inhabitants of Truchas, New Mexico, who were direct descendants of the Spanish conquerors who opened the North American continent to colonization and development. The Spanish conquerors were searching for the seven golden cities of Cibola, but found only Indians, pueblos and mud huts instead of gold. The Spanish government commissioned the Cortes and Velazquez expeditions after receiving reports of gold. Bernard De Voto, a noted lecturer and Pulitzer Prize...
Dates:
1955
Niagara Falls ; Navajo
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 78
Scope and Contents
SEGMENT 1: Niagara Falls. This remote broadcast from Niagara Falls features Bobb Schaeffer, AMNH paleontologist, and Dr. Anderson, Niagara Park official, discussing a disaster which occured six weeks earlier when Prospect Point broke away from the Falls. The forces of nature are dramatically observed through films of the point at Niagara Falls breaking away and plunging into the gorge. SEGMENT 2: Navajo. The second segment of the season's premiere describes the Adventure crew's three-week...
Dates:
1954
Nigeria
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 249
Scope and Contents
Anthropologist Francis Paine Conant made this film as part of his dissertation for Columbia University. The film documents the use of the tools Conant collected for the AMNH from the peoples of northcentral Africa. Conant filmed Fulani (i.e. Fulbe), Hausa, and the "pagan" Dass (i.e. Maguzawa) people performing various tasks. Two men build a cone or cylinder house; a bow is made by bending a straight branch, one end of which is anchored in a tree hole as the other is tugged until the desired...
Dates:
1958
Northwest Coast Indians
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 98
Scope and Contents
The story of the Northwest Coast Indians and the loss of their culture is the subject examined. Harry Tschopik, AMNH ethnologist, discusses the recent disappearance of the Coast Indians' culture as a result of an obsession with a tribal institution called potlatch. A ceremony in which tribal members try to outdo each other by giving away their most prized possessions, this practice eventually undermined their economic and traditional value system. Some of the artifacts, such as carvings,...
Dates:
1955
American Museum of Natural History
Museum Archives at the Gottesman Research Library
200 Central Park West
New York, NY 10024-5192