Web Directory

quads

Sites with a clapper blue serve video or audio content online.

The Alger Hiss Story clapper blue

Alger Hiss was a US State Department official convicted in 1950 of perjury following accusations by Whittaker Chambers that he was a secret communist. The site brings together the historical background, the arguments and evidence in favour of and against Hiss and includes video clips of American newsreel coverage of the story.

Archivio Storico clapper blue

Information on 12,000 editions from various newsreels produced by Luce and others in Italy 1928-1990, as well as several thousand documentaries. Also includes foreign newsreels made in Germany (some by UFA) as well as 150 hours of material made by the American War Office between 1943 and 1945. Shot lists and running times are provided for all the items, and several hundred hours of video clips.

BBC Nation on Film clapper blue

This archive of historical film clips, hosted by the BBC with the Open University, includes extracts from the ICI cinemagazine Just Billingham in its Chemical Industry section.

BBC: On This Day clapper blue

Video and audio from the huge BBC news archive from 1950 onwards, including Television Newsreel material, made available through RealPlayer, with plenty of textual support. The entire database can be searched by month and day and by theme and there is also a section devoted to witness accounts.

BECTU History Project

The BECTU History Project records interviews with members of the film and television industry, including several who worked with the newsreels. Master tapes are preserved in the BFI National Archive with access copies held in the BFI National Library.

Beyond Pathe clapper blue

Beyond Pathe is a privileged acces site brings the British Pathe Newsreel archive to schools in the UK. It is a pilot project, concentrating on the Second World War, whose aim is to enable schools within the West Midlands to utilise the Pathe archive, which are free to use in educational establishments.

BFI InView clapper blue

600 hours of material from the BFI National Archive and partner organisations, including The National Archives, focusing on how key social, political and economic issues have been represented through moving images. Many examples of cinemagazines produced by the Central Office of Information are available, such as This Week in Britain and The Pacemakers. This resource is only available to UK FE/HE users.

British Film Institute Reuben Library

The BFI library contains a wide range of books and journals relating to the newsreels. The catalogue is accessible online.

BFI Special Collections

The BFI Special Collections department holds unpublished materials including the papers of the Newsreel Association, the private papers of Yvonne Fletcher, Peter Hampton, Stanley Mumford and Patrick Wyand, and the surviving papers of the Topical Film Company (producers
of Topical Budget).

British Movietonews clapper blue

Online database for the entirety of British Movietone News (1929-1979), with detailed descriptions and streamed video for all news stories via QuickTime. Requires (free) registration.

British Pathe clapper blue

Up to 3,500 hours of streamed material is available, covering the whole of the Pathe newsreel and cinemagazine film library. Series available include Pathe News, Pathe Pictorial and Eve’s Film Review.

British Universities Film & Video Council

The BUFVC, which hosts this website, is a major source of newsreel and cinemagazine information, with books, artefacts, manuscripts and production documents, including the entire British Pathe paper archive. Information on newsreels can also be found through its Moving Image Gateway and Researcher’s Guide to Screen Heritage databases.

Film Australia Digital Learning clapper blue

A stylish and informative educational resource on Australian life, with free video clips. It include well-contextualised materials and clips of Australian newsreels from the silent and sound eras.

Gaumont Pathe Archives clapper blue

The combined archives of the Gaumont, Eclair and French Pathe news archives, with news material going back to 1896. There is a substantial number of streamed video copies of Gaumont newsreels, making this site one of the leading sources of online historical news footage in the world. The catalogue is available in French and English.

Harappa clapper blue

Explores the heritage of the Indus Valley civilization, and 20th century India and Pakistan through text, drawings, photographs and film. Features video clips from newsreels covering Independence in a ‘Wall of Movies’ feature, and March of Time outtakes from the same period.

Imperial War Museum

The Film & Video section of the Museum’s Collections Online database includes catalogue data for Topical Budget (1914-1918), Warwork News, War Pictorial News, The Gen, Worker and Warfront, and Welt im Film, the Anglo-American newsreel produced for screening in occupied Germany after the war.

Imperial War Museum Sound Archive

Includes sound recordings of British service and newsreel cameramen who worked during the Second World War.

International Association for Media and History

Organisation made up film and television broadcasters, researchers and scholars interested in the media of film, television and radio and their relations to history. Its website provides a forum for those interested in this field, with information on conferences, publications, and members’ research activities.

Internet Archive clapper blue

The Internet Archive has around 600 examples of the American Universal Newsreel, which ran 1929-1967. The newsreel is in the public domain in America, and the newsreels are free to download in MPEG1, MPEG2 and MPEG4 formats.

ITN Source clapper blue

ITN Source (formerly ITN Archive) holds ITN’s television news broadcasts from 1955, and the Reuters Television library of British cinema newsreel material (Gaumont-British News, Gaumont Graphic, British Paramount News, Universal News and others).

The March Toward War clapper blue

A website produced by the American Studies Program at the University of Virginia which contains items from the March of Time, available in the Timeline section.

Mass-Observation Archive

Mass-Observation was a social research organisation founded in 1937. Its archive is held in the University of Sussex, and in the section ‘Films 1936-50’ there are extensive reports on audience responses to British newsreels during World War Two. All of the File Reports on newsreels are available in the Learn More section of News on Screen.

Movietone News Dope Sheets: The War Years

The University of South Carolina Newsfilm Library, in collaboration with the Library of Congress, have digitised over 2,000 Fox Movietone News dope sheets from December 1941 to 1945. This is just a small sample of the 30,000 dope sheets that were filed by the company and can be searched by country, date and description.

The National Archives clapper blue

The National Archives (formerly the Public Record Office) holds records and production files relating to government cinemagazine and newsreel production, including the Central Office of Information and the films from the nationalised industries such as Mining Review. Details are available through its online Catalogue. Viewable cinemagazine content is included in its online Public Information Films section.

Newsfilm Library clapper blue

The University of South Carolina holds a portion of the American Fox Movietonews cinema newsreel (and examples of the silent Fox News). The collection covers the periods 1919-1934 and 1942-1944. There is an online catalogue, still images from the collection and a small number of video clips available.

Newsfilm Online clapper blue

3000 hours of footage from ITN Source is now available for download including all their Gaumont newsreel material, Gaumont Graphic and Gaumont British News, together with a selection of British Paramount News. This resource is only available to FE/HE users in the UK.

Newsplayer clapper blue

Newsfilms from 1896 to the twenty-first century (from French Pathe and ITN Archive) available on subscription. Free preview section.

Newseum

Web version of the American museum based in Virginia which offers an interactive look at the news through features on the Berlin Wall, War and news stories of the twentieth-century, among other subjects.

Open Images clapper blue

Over 1000 hours of material produced by the Dutch newsreel company Polygoon-Profilti are available for download from the Open Images site under a Creative Commons – Share Alike license.

Reel History clapper blue

A selection of newsreels and other short films from Swedish Television (SVT) and the Swedish National Archive of Recorded Sound and Moving Images (SLBA), divided into themes, and based on a database of Swedish newsreels and short films (not available).

ProQuest Learning: History clapper blue

Pathe newsreel clips on such themes as British Empire; Black Americans; The Irish Question; Conflict and Cold War; The First World War etc. designed for Secondary Education. Free trial or annual subscription.

Scottish Screen Archiveclapper blue

Clips of cinemagazines such as Home and Away and City Sidelights can be viewed on the website along with over a thousand clips from the Scottish Screen Archive collection.

Screenonline clapper blue

A guide to British film and television history, with several hundred hours of streamed video accessible only to UK schools, colleges and libraries. The video includes newsreel and cinemagazine material, including Topical Budget, Britain Can Make It, Cinegazette, Mining Review and Worker and Warfront.

Shapes of Time clapper blue

Support website for the Regional Broadband Consortium/British Pathe Schools Licence. Contains a large number of links, resources and ideas for using newsreel content in education.

Terence Gallacher’s Recollections Of A Career In Film

Terry Gallacher’s long career as included periods at British Movietone, United Press International Television News (UPITN) as well as director of his company. Through this ever-expanding site Terry is re-telling his unique story through text and audio. Although the articles span his whole career, the podcasts focus purely on his time at British Movietone

UCLA Film and Television Archive

American film archive which holds Hearst Metrotone News. Its holdings are traceable through the MELVYL Catalog.

Wochenschau-Archiv clapper blue

The Federal Film Archives, Berlin, are digitising the Deutsche Wocheschau
newsreel collection of German newsreels from 1949 and making them freely available over the internet. Over 4,000 stories have been issued so far, for lowband (56K) or broadband (250K) connections, using Windows Media Player. In English and German.

WPA Film Library

American stockshot library which includes the British Pathe newsreel database.

WSLS-TV (Roanoke, VA) Newsfilm Collection clapper blue

WSLS-TV of Roanoke, Virginia, USA. donated this collection which spans 1951 to 1971 to the University of Virginia. It comprises approximately 13,000 clips of 16mm film shown during news programmes and roughly 18,000 pages of the accompanying scripts read on air by anchorpersons.