LibGuides: AFR 387: Performing Blackness / Thompson: Film and Video

Streaming Video

Black Studies in Video This link opens in a new window
Coverage varies. Unlimited users.
This collection is a black studies portfolio that brings together seminal documentaries, powerful interviews, and previously unavailable archival footage surveying the black experience. The collection contains 500 hours of film covering African American history, politics, art and culture, family structure, gender relationships, and social and economic issues.
Broadway on Demand Collection This link opens in a new window
Dates of coverage vary. Unlimited users.
The Broadway on Demand Collection provides an extensive range of content that goes beyond live performances. Along with musicals, plays, and dance performances, the collection includes unique behind-the-scenes series, documentaries, and masterclasses to help researchers gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of the art of theater.
Dance Online: Dance in Video Vol. I-IV This link opens in a new window
Dates of coverage vary. Unlimited users.
Updated regularly until completion. Contains dance productions and documentaries by the most influential performers and companies of the 20th century. Selections cover performances of ballet, tap, jazz, contemporary, experimental, and improvisational dance, as well as forerunners of the forms and the pioneers of modern concert dance. Included are classic performances from top ballet companies and experimental works from up-and-coming dance troupes. Dance in Video, Vol. IV includes Dancio, “an exceptional catalog of world-class instructors each offering Dancio expertise across an array of diverse dance styles ranging from ballet to contemporary.”
Users may also make isolated clips from the videos and save them in a free account available for registration set up within the database.
Additional information on basic system requirements for both PC and Mac platforms is available on the site.
Digital Theatre Plus This link opens in a new window
Coverage varies. Unlimited.
Full length British theatre productions, interviews with cast and crew, and documentaries about the production. Includes productions from Shakespeare to contemporary plays, with teaching guides. This database also includes Broadway HD, opera, musical theatre, dance/ballet, symphonic and chamber music, as well as theatre from Russia and 20+ from South Asia, and film shorts.
Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive This link opens in a new window
1930s - present. Unlimited users.
Curated by America's longest running dance festival, Jacob’s Pillow, this free resource includes dance clips from the festival spanning from the 1930s to today. Search by artist, genre, or era. The collection is constantly growing, and you can click SIGN UP to receive notice of all new videos.
Medici.tv This link opens in a new window
Dates vary. Unlimited.
The world's leading classical music channel, medici.tv features over 1,800 programs and more than 100 live events broadcast each year. Content includes music festivals (such as the Verbier, Salzburg, and Lucerne), concerts from baroque through contemporary music (Berlin, New York Philharmonic orchestras, the Concertgebouw, Carnegie Hall recitals, etc.), operas (including Paris and La Scala), ballets, workshops and master classes with renowned artists (from Juilliard, Heidelberg, and elsewhere), competitions (the Tchaikovsky from Moscow), documentaries, artist portraits, and archived performances.
Met Opera on Demand This link opens in a new window
1935 - 1990s. Unlimited.
Student Access offers University of Texas users instant access to more than 550 full-length Met performances, including stunning HD videos from the Met’s award-winning Live in HD series of movie theater transmissions, classic telecasts from the 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s, and hundreds of radio broadcasts dating back to 1935. The site and its content are fully accessible on most mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) directly through the website as well. All videos include English subtitles, and recent HD videos include subtitles in French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and/or Swedish. New titles are added every month, with most of the Met’s Live in HD programs coming online a few months after their live transmission date. Every opera includes an English synopsis, with synopses in multiple languages available for many operas.
Music Online: Opera in Video This link opens in a new window
Dates of coverage vary. Unlimited users.
Updated regularly until completion. Scheduled to contain 250 of the most important opera performances, captured on video through staged productions, interviews, and documentaries. Selections represent the world’s best performers, conductors, and opera houses and are based on a work’s importance to the operatic canon. The collection presents an overview of the most commonly studied operas in music history, opera literature, and performance classes. Multiple performances and stagings worldwide of the major operas allow for analysis of stage design, vocal techniques, roles, and musical interpretation across time periods, opera houses, and conductors.
Performances will cover the full range of operatic composition, from the Baroque to the 20th century.
Specially developed controlled vocabularies let users browse by composer, genre, performer, ensemble, time period, and role.
OnTheBoards.TV This link opens in a new window
Dates of coverage vary. Unlimited users.
Works best on browsers other than Firefox
OntheBoards.tv is an on-demand website for HD-quality contemporary performance films. Launched in January 2010, this first-of-its-kind site brings contemporary work to a wider public by filming top caliber performances with multiple high-definition cameras, editing the film collaboratively with the artists, and delivering them online as feature-length performance films. Filmed at On the Boards, as well as peer theaters across the country, the performances present a snapshot of the best new works by current leaders in dance, theater and music. The films consist of compelling international and northwest contemporary performance including works by artists who are rarely seen in the US and works that will never be performed again.
Theatre in Video This link opens in a new window
Dates of coverage vary. Unlimited users.
Contains streaming video of more than 250 of the world’s most important plays, together with more than 100 video documentaries. Also includes the full text of plays, their history of performance, production background, reference materials and ephemera. Users have the ability to bookmark specific scenes, monologues, and staging examples and then include those online links in papers and course reserves. The included plays are predominately 20th century masterpieces, as well as many Shakespeare productions.
Users may also make isolated clips from the videos and save them in a free account available for registration set up within the database.
Information on basic system requirements for both PC and Mac platforms is available on the site.

Documentary Databases

Kanopy This link opens in a new window
Dates of coverage vary. Unlimited users.
This streaming service has a catalog of over 30,000 titles covering various educational topics and feature films for some 800 producers including Criterion, Documentary Educational Resources, New Day Films, Media Education, California Newsreel, PBS and others.
Titles streamed by Kanopy are available either directly from the library catalog or from the UT Kanopy interface linked above. Some titles on the UT Kanopy interface are not immediately available to UT community for streaming. Those titles for which we do not hold streaming rights could be requested by filling in a request form. This form would appear on your screen and forwarded to a staff member for consideration. Given our limited funds, we emphasize study and research needs when making purchase decisions.
Docuseek Complete Collection: 4th Edition This link opens in a new window
1950 - present. Unlimited users.
The Docuseek Complete Collection (4th edition) provides exclusive educational streaming access to over 2000 important documentaries from renowned distribution leaders, including Bullfrog Films, Icarus Films, dGenerate Films, Women Make Movies, GOOD DOCS, Collective Eye Films, First Run Features, National Film Board of Canada, KimStim, European distributors First Hand Films, AndanaFilms, Cinétévé, and new producing and distributing partners 371 Productions, Lightdox, Autlook, Dutch CORE, Ideas Roadshow, and other participating filmmakers and distributors. This collection will include 3000 titles by December 2026.

Also search for documentaries directly in the library catalog. Use the Advanced Search option in the Library Catalog to enter terms such as title of the work, other details you know (such as director, cast members, screenwriter, studio, etc.), and select Video/Film from the Resource Type menu.

Alternately, you can enter your terms in the Simple Search box and then use the facets to refine your results to Videos. You can limit your results to "Physical copy" or "Available online".

AFR 387: Performing Blackness / Thompson

Film and Video

Streaming Video

Documentary Databases

Contemporary Videos