Academy award winning documentary director Jessica Yu first made a splash with this elegantly simple 1992 film of an array of people suffering through an intensely sour candy experience. Picture an Andy Warhol screen test series that’s suitable for kids. link
Continue readingCategory Archives: Streaming Video
Portal to public domain videos online
This website provides nice orderly links to streaming videos of old films that reside at Google Video, Dumpalink, iFilm, and YouTube. The collection is a combination of works that are out-of-copyright (public domain), orphaned (obscure videos that are still under copyright but probably forgotten by their owners), and some that are more recent and possibly […]
Continue readingIt’s a series of tubes
Al Gore may have invented it, but it took Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens to explain it to the rest of us. What is this internet thing? Well, apparently it’s a series of tubes. Senator Stevens gave his lucid description during debate on net neutrality legislation recently. Thanks to his insight on a complicated […]
Continue readingFrank Zappa challenging censorship on CNN’s Crossfire (circa 1986)
This entertaining clip captures the late Frank Zappa during the period when he was taking on the PMRC (Parents Music Resource Center) on Capitol Hill and fighting for free speech. His deadly wit and calm articulate defense of all musical lyrics, no matter the content, seems to ever-so-slightly win over conservative co-host Robert Novak. It’s […]
Continue readingGuilty Pleasure: Hawaii Surf Session Report
Stuck in Washington this summer and in need of a mental escape? Try this site. I’ve never surfed but I have a weakness for watching surfers at work, gliding along through crashing walls of water. This kinda primitively designed site includes frequently updated “session” videos compiling footage of surfing conditions at the major surf beaches […]
Continue readingMIT World – on-demand video of significant public events at MIT
An extensive set of lectures, events, readings – heavy on the science topics but there’s probably something here for everyone. Things that caught my eye included readings by Margaret Atwood, Russell Banks, Robert Pinsky, Maurice Sendak, and Seamus Heaney. Lectures by Noam Chomsky, Eric Foner, Thomas Friedman, Frank Gehry, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates, Dean Kamen, […]
Continue readingMust-see film: Powers of Ten now viewable online
This is a really cool film that illustrates the size of the universe in powers of ten – starting with a couple having a picnic in Chicago zooming out to 100 million lightyears away – and then all the way back in to the man’s hand and on down to a single proton, .000001 angstroms. […]
Continue readingA few cult movies now in the public domain and on Google video
Night of the Living Dead (Romero, 1968)Reefer Madness (Gasnier, 1936)Plan 9 from Outer Space (Wood, 1959)
Continue readingCold War Classic – Duck and Cover (1951) on Google Video
This 9 minute film was made by the U.S. Federal Civil Defense Administration to instruct children on how to react when an atomic bomb was detonated nearby. The film was used extensively in Kevin Rafferty’s Atomic Cafe (1982, DVD 536), a documentary surveying the U.S. government’s propaganda promoting the atomic bomb. link
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