The Boston Public Library's online collections and exhibits have caught the attention of the Scout Report several times in the past few years, and this recent addition should be interesting to those persons with a love of urban history and early examples of short films. Four films are made available here, including a panoramic view of the Boston subway from an electric car from 1901 and the short...

British Council Film "is the link between UK films and filmmakers and new international audiences." Along with their work promoting a set of productive artistic and commercial relationships and networks, they have also digitized 80 remarkable short films. The films were originally produced by the British Council during the 1940s and were designed "to show the world how Britain lived, worked, and...

The Chicago Film Archives is an amazing regional film archive that collects, preserves, and provides access to films that represent the spirit of the Midwest. They work together with a range of other partners to host film festivals, develop seminars, and also sponsor public lectures. Visitors should click on over to the Explore Collections area to browse through over 600 films. This section...

If you've ever had the desire to learn more about cinematic traditions in the Netherlands, you'll be pleased to learn about the Cinema Context website. This database contains four separate databases related to Dutch film culture, including those related to films, cinemas, people in the industry, and film companies. These databases can be found in the sections titled "People", "Companies",...

Branded as a "short and sweet overview of every part of the filmmaking process," Coffee Break Film School offers a fun and free way to expand on basic filmmaking skills. With 6 units and more than 10 videos per unit, the curriculum covers a lot of ground. However, as the name Coffee Break implies, each video's brevity allows for digestible browsing. Plus, most videos are flagged by difficulty...

Joseph Cornell was a man of many talents, and during his sixty-nine years his artistic endeavors included short films, shadow boxes, colleges, and his well-known assemblages. After his death in 1972, his sister began the process of donating his personal papers and various effects to the Smithsonian Institution. Over the past few years, the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art have worked to...

The mission of the Community Video Education Trust (CVET) in Cape Town, South Africa, is to provide the community with media access and use this access as a way to bring about social change. Additionally, CVET was also created to train community members in video and commercial productions. This website has footage from the late 1980s and early 1990s of anti-apartheid activity. Trade unions,...

The late Salvador Dali was a rather brilliant artist and a very effective self-promoter. Throughout his long life he remained interested in the power of cinema and he engaged in a number of collaborative works with Luis Bu'uel, Alfred Hitchcock, and Walt Disney. Recently, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) decided to launch both an in situ exhibit and this interactive website in order to explore some...

The Dartmouth College Library has crafted digital collections celebrating some well-known alumni (such as Dr. Seuss) and other topics. This particular collection brings together a very fine set of films documenting activities and events that took place on campus. The items here are divided into two sections: Historical Films (1930s-1960s) and Contemporary Films (2008-2012). The Historical Films...

Ephemeral films are those films that are made "for educational, industrial, or promotional purposes" and they are a specialty over at the Internet Archive. This delightful collection is both informative and amusing and contains over 200 of these films. Visitors can view the "Most Downloaded Items Last Week" to get a sense of the wisdom of the crowds, or they can go their own way by browsing by...