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Streaming Film Collections by Subject

This guide is designed to help faculty and students identify streaming films for use in classes, projects, or even as secondary sources.

Womens History Month

March is Women's History Month, Ohio U Library has many diverse media resources - documentaries, feature films, experimental, narratives, local, North American, and international.    We have a variety of streaming content, as well as DVDs that celebrate women in all their facets.  

One of the first women to direct and produce in the Hollywood Studio system, was Ida Lupino, with The Bigamist and The Hitch-Hiker in the 1950s.  Ida Lupino is known as an actress to most; High Sierra, On Dangerous Ground, and many more.  A fan of film noir, Ida Lupino was the first female to direct a film noir --The Hitchhiker,  

Women filmmakers to know --  Kelly Reichardt (Meeks Cutoff), Jane Campion (The Piano), Maya Deren (Meshes of an Afternoon), Agnes Varda (The Gleaners and I), Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding); Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust), Andrea Arnolds (American Honey), Cheryl Dunye (The Watermelon Woman), Katherine Bigelow (The Hurt Locker)

Women today can thank these trailblazers and University Libraries is fortunate to work with a few female-centered distributors. Women Make Movies has been around 45 years to support women filmmakers and directors.  They champion such filmmakers as Julie Dash (Illusions), Kim Longonotto (Pink Saris), Trinh T. Minh-ha (Surname Viet Given Name Nam), and more.  University Libraries hold many WMM DVD's and we have some streaming content. courtesy of our streaming vendor, Docuseek2.  If you wish to purchase a DVD and/or streaming license, talk to your subject librarian. 

Media Education Foundation, produces and distributes documentary films and other educational resources to inspire critical thinking about the social, political, and cultural impact of American mass media. They are well known for Killing Us Softly, Coded Bias, The Souls of Black Girls, and Hip Hop Beyond Beats and Rhymes. 

You can access the collection from Kanopy or by searching Media Education Foundation.

To provide you with tools for research and discovery, we have both secondary and primary resource databases for further research. Investigate Women's History and spend some time with the original women who fought for women's rights, and made it possible for these women filmmakers to flourish.  

Visit our primary source collection, Nineteenth Century Collections Online.   The collection includes primary source materials - serials, books, manuscripts, diaries, and images. Resources include the History of Women in America (Harvard University Archive), Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mary Braddon Archive.  Text snippet from Suffragist magazine, 1921,Three Pioneers of Woman Suffrage

Want to know more about the women who started it all, check out our resources at University Libraries. TOr check out some feature films and documentaries we have on these women.  

Emily Pankhurst in Suffragette | Fannie Lou Hamer documentary, Homecoming | Susan B. Anthony | Elizabeth Cady Stanton, PBS Not For Ourselves Alone  | Lucy Stone | Ida B. Wells, A Passion for Justice | Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication on the Rights of Women | Mary Church Terrell, Dignity and Defiance | Alice Paul, Iron Jawed Angels.

For more resources on Women and Gender Studies, see our research guide on Women Gender and Sexuality

picture of ida lupino looking through movie camera