Government & Government-related films
We owe another shoutout to Christina at Lam for telling us how much she likes FedFlix! We agree – it’s terrific!
FedFlix is a collection of US government public information and training films hosted over at the Internet Archive: FedFlix is a “Joint Venture NTIS-1832 between the National Technical Information Service and Public.Resource.Org. Here we feature the best movies of the United States Government, from training films to history, from our national parks to the U.S. Fire Academy and the Postal Inspectors, all of these fine flix are available for reuse without any restrictions whatsoever.”
- The content covers a wide range of topics, from forest fire control to workplace integrity, military etiquette, mining safety, cold war, homeland security/civil defence and culture, religion and communities training courtesy of the Chicago police department.
- Here are just a few sample titles you can watch: Why Vietnam (1965, Dept of Defense); the much spoofed Duck and Cover (1951, Federal Civil Defense Administration); Central Intelligence Agency True Stories (1963; and Assessing the Madoff Ponzi Scheme Part 1 and Part 2 (2009, US House of Representatives)
You may wonder – does Canada have a repository like this? Not exactly, but we do have a couple of great sources of film clips that cover a wide range of social and political topics:
- The CBC Archives is a wonderful source of CBC radio and television clips. Topics include Federal and Provincial elections; the path to Canada’s Constitution; separatism; abortion; women politicians; and foreign relations. There is also a great deal of content on various prominent political leaders such as Pierre Trudeau, Tommy Douglas, Ed Broadbent, Maurice Duplessis, William Lyon MacKenzie King, Paul Martin, Robert Bourassa, and Rene Levesque.
- The National Film Board of Canada allows the public to view a large proportion of its films for free on its website, including animated films, documentaries, war films and much more. Sample titles that you can view for free are: Call for Volunteers (1941, following the women of Winnipeg and their war efforts); Food: Weapon of Conquest (1940s newsreel); Action: The October Crisis of 1970; Airplane Casualties (1918); Air: Climate (2000); and Kanehsatake: 270 years of Resistance (1993).
- If you click the “playlists” link you’ll find collections of films grouped under various themes, such as the Winter Sports movies, hockey movies, anti-racism films and “fun films about science and technology.”