Audio/Visual Collections

The Library maintains collections of both physical (DVD, VHS, 16mm) and streaming media. You can search the catalog for specific titles or go directly to the catalog or database to search for films by title, director or genre. If you have any questions or need help finding a title, just contact us.

Databases

Physical and Streaming

Academic Video Online (AVON) This link opens in a new window
Academic Video Online from Alexander Street delivers 80,000+ titles spanning a wide range of subject areas including anthropology, business, counseling, film, health, history, music, and more. More than 18,000 titles are exclusive to Alexander Street.

Debate: Baldwin vs Buckley
1965, 55:48 min, B&W
This video presents a debate between African American author James Baldwin and American political theorist William F. Buckley on the theme 'Has the American dream been achieved at the expense of the American negro?'
50 Years of Fabulous
50 Years of Fabulous recounts the rich history of the Imperial Council, the oldest LGBT charity organization in the world, founded in San Francisco by renowned activist, drag queen, and performer Jose Sarria.
From There To Here - Teo Qi Yu
In 1949, the author’s young grandfather migrated from An Xi, China, to Singapore. Spending almost 70 years in Singapore, he has only been back home four times. As an immigrant from China, grandfather has always been missing his homeland despite already forming a new family in Singapore. At the age of 79, he is diagnosed with stage four cancer and is left with about 6 more months to live. He faces the end of his life while still maintaining his daily life, opening his store every morning. His granddaughter’s camera captures the love her taciturn grandfather holds for An Xi by unbolting the doors of his memory leading to the “other home,” that had been slumbering until now.
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The film is an intimate documentary creating a portrait of grandfather through a series of anecdotes by people from different phases from his life. Tracking through grandfather’s accomplishments in Singapore, it follows him towards the end of his life as his last wish is to have his body returned home.

Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) This link opens in a new window
EAI’s Educational Streaming Service is a unique subscription-based resource that transforms EAI’s Online Catalogue into a “digital textbook.” Almost 1,200 titles by 65 artists are currently available for streaming via this digital delivery platform. Eventually, the Service will encompass EAI’s entire collection of 3,800 media artworks.

"Off-Air" Australia - Ant Farm: Chip Lord, Doug Michels, Curtis Schreier, Douglas Hurr.
1976, 20:59 min, b&w and color, sound
Ant Farm: Chip Lord, Doug Michels, Curtis Schreier, Douglas Hurr. Role-playing and political performance were integral to Ant Farm's art-making strategies. In 1976 the group travelled to Australia as ironic "artists-in-residence," counter-cultural ambassadors. "Off-Air" Australia is a fragmented document of that trip, culled almost entirely from off-air footage of their television appearances, Australia media coverage of Ant Farm's events, and appropriated TV commercials
30 Second Spots: New York - Joan Logue
1982, 14:45 min, color, sound
Inverting the form, style and time frame of commercial television advertising, Logue has produced a unique series of dynamic video portraits of avant-garde artists, writers, musicians and performers. In 30 Second Spots: New York, which Logue terms "commercials for artists," each of the succinct vignettes conveys the artistic essence of her subject with clarity, wit, and an elegant economy of means. John Cage, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Spalding Gray and Nam June Paik are among the artists who are captured here with concise drama.
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Each subject performs in close-up before a stationary camera; Logue heightens this intimate theater with a precise application of subtle electronic effects. Steve Reich's hands are seen in close-up as he claps out a syncopated rhythm; a dance gesture by Arnie Zane and Bill T. Jones is transformed into a sequence of color and texture; Laurie Anderson's face fills the screen as she knocks on her amplified head with unexpected resonance.
360 - Julia Heyward
1981, 46:02 min, color, sound
As an early pioneer of the music video, Julia Heyward presents a long-form "video album" with 360 that was released just a year prior to the birth of MTV. Heyward's ten songs (recorded with Jody Harris of The Raybeats and The Contortions and Don Christensen of The Raybeats and Bush Tetras) are interspersed with her familiar a cappella-like monologues.
Catscan - Carolee Schneemann
1988, 12:46 min, color, sound
Catscan is a group performance within a chaotic density of projected images and office furniture, motivated by Egyptian funerary rituals of mourning, grief and spirits of the dead. It sustains aspects of Schneemann's previous works built with dream instruction, positing the interchange of intimacy and physicality, the erotic and the obscene, the incubation of dream enactment. Catscan centers on the death of a beloved cat as a means to ritualize more universal mourning and to bring forward ghosts of the past. As a ritual consecration, Schneemann, blindfolded, dances out of 20 yards of red fabric wound around her body.
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The performance, which had a duration of approximately 90 minutes and variously featured 5 to 8 performers, included a slide projection system, 15 video monitors, ladders, furniture, suitcases, and debris.
Centers - Vito Acconci
In Centers, Acconci faces the camera, his head and arm in close-up as he points straight ahead at his own image on the video monitor, attempting to keep his finger focused on the exact center of the screen. In pointing at the image of himself, Acconci is also pointing directly at the viewer — an action that is paradigmatic of the psychological dynamic of Acconci's work in video. As the tape proceeds in real time, the only changes in the performance action are slight adjustments in the position of his finger as his endurance falters. Acconci has written, "The result (the TV image) turns the activity around: a pointing away from myself, at an outside viewer — I end up widening my focus onto passing viewers (I'm looking straight out by looking straight in)."
Early Color TV Manipulations - Nam June Paik and Jud Yalkut
This restored collection of rare early collaborative works by Nam June Paik and Jud Yalkut is historically significant as well as remarkably prescient. Recorded between 1965 and 1971, these "video-films" reveal insights into the evolution of Paik's work in video, performance and installation, and are among the earliest explorations of the interfacing of film and video. They are marked by a playful, irreverent sense of improvisation and experimentation. Richly inventive and ironic, if at times technically crude, these experiments form a link between Paik's performance and sculptural works of the 1950s and early 1960s and the celebrated videotapes and installations of recent years.

Kanopy This link opens in a new window
Streaming videos selected to support coursework at Cooper Union for the current academic year.

The Cooper Union Library maintains a select collection of films on 16mm. They are for classroom use only and must be shown by a qualified projectionist. Below is a complete list of titles and information on whether we also own copies in DVD or VHS formats. For more information, please contact Dale Perreault.

16mm Film List

Additional Film/Video Collections

AdViews This link opens in a new window
The AdViews digital collection provides access to thousands of historic commercials created for clients or acquired by the D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles (DMB&B) advertising agency or its predecessor during the 1950s - 1980s. All of the commercials held in the DMB&B Archives will be digitized, allowing students and researchers access to a wide range of vintage brand advertising from the first four decades of mainstream commercial television.
American Indian Film Gallery This link opens in a new window
The AIFG presently contains over 450 non-fiction films that document Native lifeways from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego, with a large concentration on peoples of the Southwest. The films range from a 1922 silent newsreel to recent footage of pow-wows and political meetings in 2011.
art21 This link opens in a new window
Art21 produces award-winning documentary films about the world’s most groundbreaking contemporary artists.
Black Film Archive (BFA) This link opens in a new window
Black Film Archive is a living register of Black films. In its current iteration, it showcases Black films made from 1898 to 1999 currently streaming.
British Pathé This link opens in a new window
British Pathé is considered to be the finest newsreel archive in the world. Spanning the years from 1896-1978, its collections include footage from around the globe of major events, famous faces, fashion trends, travel, science, and culture. It is an invaluable resource for broadcasters, documentary producers, museum curators, and researchers worldwide. The entire archive of 85,000 films is available to view for free on the British Pathé website while licences can be acquired for other uses.
MUBI Public Domain Greats This link opens in a new window
As of January 1, 2022 all films released in 1926 and earlier are in the public domain in the United States. In 2023, all films released in 1927 will enter the public domain, and so on. Films on this list released in later years lost their copyright status for a variety of reasons while protected under old copyright laws. Obviously, this list is far from exhaustive and presents only a small selection of the public domain’s ever-increasing riches.,
Open Culture Free Movies Online This link opens in a new window
Watch 4,000+ movies free online. Includes classics, indies, film noir, documentaries and other films, created by some of our greatest actors, actresses and directors. The collection is divided into the following categories: Comedy & Drama; Film Noir, Horror & Hitchcock; Westerns (many with John Wayne); Martial Arts Movies; Silent Films; Documentaries, and Animation.
The Public Domain Review Film Collection This link opens in a new window
The focus of the Public Domain Review is on works that have fallen into the public domain—a vast commons of out-of-copyright material that everyone is free to enjoy, share, and build upon without restriction.

Additional Audio Collections

BBC Sound Effects This link opens in a new window
The BBC Sound Effects Archive is available for personal, educational or research purposes. There are over 33,000 clips from across the world from the past 100 years. These include clips made by the BBC Radiophonic workshop, recordings from the Blitz in London, special effects made for BBC TV and Radio productions, as well as 15,000 recordings from the Natural History Unit archive. You can explore sounds from every continent - from the college bells ringing in Oxford to a Patagonian waterfall - or listen to a submarine klaxon or the sound of a 1969 Ford Cortina door slamming shut.
The Public Domain Review Audio Collection This link opens in a new window
The focus of the Public Domain Review is on works now fallen into the public domain, that vast commons of out-of-copyright material that everyone is free to enjoy, share, and build upon without restriction. Our aim is to promote and celebrate the public domain in all its abundance and diversity, and help our readers explore its rich terrain – like a small exhibition gallery at the entrance to an immense network of archives and storage rooms that lie beyond.
Voices from the Great Hall This link opens in a new window
The Voices from the Great Hall digital platform encompasses all known sound and video recordings made in the Hall and held by The Cooper Union dating back to John Dewey’s 1941 address "In Philosophy." This historical collection, which documents over 3,000 Great Hall programs, also includes photographs, fliers, press releases, and other ephemera dating back to 1859.