The BUFVC Moving Image Gateway includes over 1,300 websites relating to video, multimedia and sound materials. These have been subdivided into over 40 subject areas. To suggest new entries or amendments, please contact us by email or telephone or visit the Gateway at http://bufvc.ac.uk/gateway/

Digital Theatre Plus
An offshoot of Digital Theatre, specifically tailored for the educational market, Digital Theatre Plus offers subscribers streamed high definition versions of recent British theatre productions. A variety of Subscription packages are available – tailored to different educational needs, from Primary to University level, all of which include a variety of teaching resources, study guides, interviews and documentaries, as well as access to the plays themselves. Digital Theatre’s partners include the RSC, The Young Vic, The Unicorn Theatre and Frantic Assembly. Currently available via the site are the Liverpool Everyman Playhouse production of Macbeth, starring David Morrissey and The Young Vic’s production of A Dolls House, directed by Carrie Cracknell.

Explore Ibsen
Subtitled “The World’s First Staging of Ibsen on the Internet”, this is a quirky and visually striking site which offers an idiosyncratic introduction to the work of the Norwegian playwright. Beginning with the original footage of Ibsen’s funeral in 1906, followed by a reconstruction of his final words, the spirit of Ibsen then takes leave from his death-bed and guides the viewer on a virtual tour of Oslo, punctuated by scenes from the plays, staged especially for this resource. Some of the monologues, in particular, are powerfully recreated. Navigation can be frustrating, but nonetheless this is an interesting resource.

Lost Films
An initiative of the Deutsche Kinemathek Museum für Film und Fernsehen this site aims to encourage a collaborative approach to listing and identifying relevant information and surviving documents concerning lost and unidentified films, ranging from well-known examples like F.W. Murnau’s Four Devils, to obscurities such as 1968 Franco-Spanish werewolf film Las noches del hombre lobo, where there is some doubt as to whether the film ever existed at all. Users of the site are invited to register in order to be able to take part, either by uploading stills, or video clips, of films they cannot identify or leaving comments in order to help name films already posted on the site. The links page offers a range of helpful pointers to printed sources, other identification initiatives, exhibitions and festivals and hoaxes and jokes.

Nobelprize.org
The official website of the Nobel Prize includes audio and video material of interviews, lectures and speeches by Nobel Laureates as well as biographical information, transcripts of speeches and links to other resources. The audiovisual material is scattered across the site rather than organised as a single resource, which can be frustrating, but there is interesting material here if one takes the time to seek them out. Noteworthy examples include this excerpt from Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz’s Nobel lecture , from December 1980, and a video recording of Martin Luther King’s acceptance speech on being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

Virtual Microscope
This excellent Earth Sciences resource was developed by the Open University to broaden access to rock collections previously only available in universities, museums or specialist institutions. The aim is to engage with students at school or in higher education and to help develop identification and classification skills without the need for expensive microscopes or the facilities to prepare thin slices of rock. Users can zoom, pan and rotate specimens in light conditions that mirror those previously only possible using specialist petrological microscopes. The collections include cross-sections from Meteorites, Moon rocks and the UKVM collection, which consists of igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks from around the UK. There is also a news section and a list of teaching resources, with links to other resources.