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:
Pompeii
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 139
Scope and Contents
Walter Ashlin Fairservis, AMNH archaeologist, served as consultant for this broadcast on Pompeii, the ancient Roman city buried for seventeen centuries by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The entire city of Pompeii is reproduced for this program in a realistic model. Films of the eruption of a volcano and strengths and weaknesses of Roman life help portray the events which led to the fall of the Roman Empire. Sins of Pompeii is the title of the film that depicts the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius...
Dates:
1956
Portrait of the Arctic
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 61
Scope and Contents
The entire show is a film narrated by Robert Cushman Murphy, AMNH ornithologist. Murphy discusses life in the Arctic and identifies various animals and birds seen in the film. The film tracks a polar bear cub from its early nursing days through adventures with eider ducks, foxes, and a walrus. The danger of the bear's lifestyle is portrayed in a delightful sequence of events which depict animal life in the Arctic.
Dates:
1954
Preparing a museum group
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 255
Scope and Contents
This film depicts the various stages of the preparation of a diorama in the AMNH Hall of North American Mammals. First, the background is done by museum artist James Perry Wilson, who uses a chalked plumb line and ruler to draw a grid on the concave background for the group. From a smaller corresponding grid on which a preliminary drawing has been made, Wilson then does a charcoal sketch on the wall grid, and color is applied until the background painting is complete. Next, display artist...
Dates:
1950
Primitive paradise
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 256
Scope and Contents
Filmed during Lewis Cotlow's expeditions to New Guinea, 1958 and 1959. The film is the edited result of footage shot by American explorer Lewis Cotlow on two expeditions to New Guinea in 1958 and 1959. Some of the localities visited are: the Sepik River, Goroka and Bena-Bena villages, Mount Hagen, several highland villages in Papua New Guinea, and the Baliem Valley in central Irian Jaya, Indonesia. Opening scenes of natives at a sing-sing and maps of the expedition routes lead into a brief...
Dates:
1958-1959
Primitive strikes back
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 88
Scope and Contents
Harry Tschopik, AMNH curator of ethnology, discusses the relationship between primitive peoples and the scientific anthropologist and others who study them. Tschopik uses artifacts collected from native tribes all over the world to demonstrate how ethnologists study primitive cultures and how they are sometimes studied in turn. Scenes from a Sydney Kaufman production, Sorcerer's Village, depict snake dances, jugglers, stilt dancers, and an inauguration ceremony on the Ivory Coast. The film...
Dates:
1954
Queer creatures of cactus county
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 241
Scope and Contents
Filmed during the Finley Expedition to Arizona, 1925. This film was taken during the 1925 Finley Expedition to Arizona. Views of the desert and its flora open this film: creosote bushes; low mesquites; cholla or barrel cactus; and many saguaro are shown. A cross-section of a cholla cactus reveals a supply of liquid, a valuable commodity in this environment. Footage taken by Finley of a jackrabbit and a kangaroo rat follows. In order to be less conspicuous, Finley uses a cactus "blind," from...
Dates:
1925
Quetzalcoatl
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 108
Scope and Contents
Broadcast from the museum's Hall of Mexico and Central America, the program presents an in-depth examination of the influence Quetzalcoatl (Serpent God of the Aztecs) had on four major cultures. Mixtec, Toltec, Mayan, and Aztec Indians worshiped Quetzalcoatl, who was believed to be both a legendary hero and ruler, as well as a benevolent deity. He first provided the Aztecs with great material blessings including, it is believed, maize. In Central American religions, Quetzalcoatl has a...
Dates:
1955
Ramparts of the north
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 242
Scope and Contents
Filmed during the Finley-Church Expedition to the Northland, 1926. This film was taken in the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska. Scenes of the expedition's pack mule train are shown initially. A deer is filmed as it wanders into camp. As a hoary marmot suns herself on a rock, she is visited by her young; she picks it up and carries it back to the nest. In the next sequence caribou are tracked; this is followed by a typical Nature Magazine antic: one of the caribou is revealed to be a man holding...
Dates:
1926
Rams of the rimrock ; Brontosaurus ; Trance and dance in Bali
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 27
Scope and Contents
SEGMENT 1: Rams of the Rimrock. Harold E. Anthony, AMNH mammalogist, introduces the first segment of this program while standing in front of the bighorn sheep diorama in the museum's Hall of North American Mammals and discusses the courtship behavior of the rams. This film, made by naturalist and AMNH lecturer Cleveland Grant, depicts the animals in head-on collisions fighting for mates. These rams have been known to fight for days over one female. SEGMENT 2: Brontosaurus. Shot in the Hall...
Dates:
1953
Rattlesnakes and boa constrictors, rhinoceros iguana
Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 268
Scope and Contents
The first segment of this film features rattlesnakes and boa constrictors and was made by Gladwyn Kingsley Noble (curator in the AMNH Department of Herpetology). It consists of two sets of footage: the first was filmed in what appears to be the American West, and the second was probably filmed in Santo Domingo around 1923. The rattlesnake sequence depicts a road-building crew using pick-axes to dig into the side of a hill whereupon a rattlesnake den is discovered. The crew proceeds to...
Dates:
[192-?]
American Museum of Natural History
Museum Archives at the Gottesman Research Library
200 Central Park West
New York, NY 10024-5192