Skip to main content

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 275 Collections and/or Records:

Dead birds

 Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 172
Scope and Contents Filmed during the Harvard-Peabody New Guinea Expedition to the Baliem Valley of Dutch New Guinea (now Irian Jaya), 1961. This film chronicles the two seasons the expedition spent with the Dugum Dani (i.e. Dani) in the Kurelu area of the Baliem Valley, Dutch New Guinea (now Irian Jaya, Indonesia). Its purpose was to record the Kurelu wars, rituals, and daily life, and show a people trapped in an avenge-reprisal system. The scientists on the expedition were Karl G. Heider, Jim Brockhuyse and...
Dates: 1962

Deafness

 Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 136
Scope and Contents Charles Collingwood explores the world of deafness in this program. In conjunction with a trained audiologist from the New York Lexington School for the Deaf, an electrical set-up enables Collingwood's voice to be filtered out and demonstrates the tones that are lost when deafness begins. The "sounds of deafness" are carefully simulated in this program, which enables the viewers to understand the difficulties that occur when one cannot hear or speak well. Thursday's Children, an Academy...
Dates: 1956

Digging fossils in South Dakota

 Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 173
Scope and Contents Filmed during AMNH excavations in the Big Badlands of South Dakota, 1941. This film made by Charles Coles, AMNH photographer, records the paleontological work done in the Badlands of South Dakota by AMNH paleontologists Edwin H. Colbert, Albert Thomson, and Walter Granger. (Granger is seen here for the last time and the expedition was cut short by his sudden death from a heart attack.) As the Badlands National Park allowed only rudimentary excavations, the paleontologists were restricted in...
Dates: 1941

Djuka

 Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 39
Scope and Contents Located in the bush country of Dutch Guiana (now Surinam), the Djuka civilization and its history are examined in this broadcast. Originally African slaves, the Djuka people defeated their Dutch masters in an open rebellion in the early part of the eighteenth century. Charles Collingwood, the host of the program, discusses the art and history of the Djuka civilization with Morton Kahn, professor of public health at Cornell University's Medical School, and leader of the AMNH's expedition into...
Dates: 1953

DNA and living cells

 Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 174
Scope and Contents The first part of DNA and Living Cells discusses, through animated modules, how DNA and RNA direct the synthesis of certain proteins that are vital for proper cell function. DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is made up of nucleotides. A large number of nucleotides are attached together, in single file, to form a long strand. Two parallel strands linked together by base-pairing, are coiled together into a double helix. DNA occurs in the nucleus of the cell as a constituent of chromosomes, where...
Dates: 1964

Dogon mask

 Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 175
Scope and Contents This film is part of the travelling exhibition entitled "Contemporary African Arts," which was mounted by the Field Museum of Natural History of Chicago and shown at the AMNH in 1974. A group of Dogons dance against the background formed by the wattle-and-daub pueblo-style buildings of their village in Mali. The dancers wear vegetable fiber skirts, stained red with dye extracted from hibiscus leaves, and traditional carved wooden kanaga masks embellished with cowrie shells and topped with a...
Dates: [1974?]

East Africa

 Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 185
Scope and Contents This film is comprised of bits and pieces that are probably outtakes of Alfred J. Klein's Equatorial Africa: Roosevelt's Hunting Grounds, made in 1923. The film opens with a celebration surrounding the female circumcision ceremony of young Kikuyu girls. The operation (clitoridectomy) itself is filmed but the quality of the film is so rough that the viewer must know beforehand what is being viewed: the woman performing the operation holds a knife; the young Kikuyu initiates wear white...
Dates: [1923?]

Egypt ; Fish genetics ; Geology of the far north

 Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 103
Scope and Contents SEGMENT 1: Egypt. In a remote broadcast from the Brooklyn Museum, the first segment attempts to reconstruct life in Egypt during the time of the Pharoahs, as seen through Egyptian art. John Cooney, curator of egyptology at the Brooklyn Museum, narrates. Film sequences of ruins, pyramids, the Nile, wells, and Thebes were produced by Ancient World Film Series and the Archaeological Institute of America with Ray Gardner. SEGMENT 2: Fish Genetics. The second segment is concerned with fish...
Dates: 1955

Elastic time

 Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 58
Scope and Contents Richard H. Pough, chairman of the Department of Conservation and General Ecology at the AMNH, demonstrates new photographic techniques. Man has increased his knowledge through time-lapse photographic and stroboscopic (high-speed) techniques. A year in the life of a field of grain, from seed to maturity, is filmed using time-lapse photography. Charles M. Bogert, museum herpetologist, produced slow-motion films of a rattlesnake's strike. Other footage includes a drone fly, a frog leaping, the...
Dates: 1954

Embryology

 Collection
Identifier: Film Collection no. 57
Scope and Contents

Evelyn Shaw, of the Department of Animal Behavior at the American Museum of Natural History, introduces the program which opens with film clips of chicks, monkeys, kinkajous, and cocker spaniels and discussions of their beginnings. Charts of human growth in the womb are shown. The development of frog, trout, fish, and chicken embryos is seen through time-lapse photographs. The films were provided by United World Films.

Dates: 1954