Finding Videos: Free Streaming Videos

A collection of early movies made available from the Library of Congress.

The A/V Geeks are on a mission to digitize public domain films and make them freely available on the internet. Their films have been seen on The Colbert Report, MTV 2's Wonder Showzen, Mad Men, PBS, The History Channel and many other outlets. Anyone can watch, download, research or repurpose these films for their own creative projects.

More than 500 Russian films are available for free streaming from one of the premier film studios in that country. Viewers can download copies of the films for reasonable fees. (The Mosfilm Cinema website is in Russian, but its films with English subtitles are available on the YouTube channel link provided here.)

Nearly 3000 episodes of classic televion shows are avaialble from the Internet Archive.

Full-length feature films, classic shorts, and more available from the Internet Archive.

The NFBC is Canada’s public film producer and distributor, and it offers an online screening room. The NFBC offers free streaming of documentary and animated films as well as interactive stories, all of which explore the world we live in from a Canadian point of view

Access a wide variety of episodes of PBS programs including, American Experience, FRONTLINE, Independent Lens, Nova, and many more.

Prelinger Archives remains in existence, holding approximately 5,000 digitized and videotape titles (all originally derived from film) and a large collection of home movies, amateur and industrial films acquired since 2002. Its goal remains to collect, preserve, and facilitate access to films of historic significance that haven't been collected elsewhere. Included are films produced by and for many hundreds of important US corporations, nonprofit organizations, trade associations, community and interest groups, and educational institutions.

In addition to posting and viewing free videos, you can rent full-length feature films straight from YouTube. This requires that you upgrade your YouTube account to include your billing information; once you purchase the movie, you can view it on your computer while connected to the internet.

More than 50 films provide a representative cross section of the output produced by the Thanhouser film enterprise based in New Rochelle, New York between 1910 and 1917.

This site contains video, audio, and text of speeches and other media events. Among the collections are "Obama Speeches," "Movie Speeches," and a listing of what the site creators consider to be the top 100 speeches.

Watch mini-biographies of famous figures such as Malcolm X and Marilyn Monroe, or view streaming full-length Biography episodes on political and religious figures, celebrities, sports figures, and more.

Freely stream thousands of segments from The Charlie Rose Show, a popular talk show hosted by Emmy award winning journalist, Charlie Rose. On his show, Charlie "engages America's best thinkers, writers, politicians, athletes, entertainers, business leaders, scientists and other newsmakers in one-on-one interviews and roundtable discussions."

Provides access to online films, texts, images, and audio recordings related to the Civil Rights movement in the United States in the 1950's and 1960's. CRDL is a partnership among librarians, technologists, archivists, educators, scholars, academic publishers, and public broadcasters and is hosted by the Digital Library of Georgia.

A collection of documentaries exploring aspects of folkways in the United States.

The Mike Wallace Interview was a national television show that ran from 1957 to 1960. The Ransom Center at the University of Texas has digitized dozens of videos from 1957 and 1958. Among those profiled are Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Sanger, and Frank Lloyd-Wright.

The MIT Video website aggregates and curates video produced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's offices, laboratories, centers and administration. This includes feature and editorial videos, event recordings, academic content and more.

TED is a nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks (18 minutes or less). TED began in 1984 as a conference where Technology, Entertainment and Design converged, and today covers almost all topics — from science to business to global issues — in more than 100 languages.

This site from the Internet Archive allows users to search news stories from 20 networks by caption text. To date, more than 1000 news series have been archived from 2009 until 24 hours ago. The project leaders' goal is to capture and archive news shows dating back to the dawn of television.

British Pathé is considered to be the finest newsreel archive in the world and is a treasure trove of 85,000 films unrivalled in their historical and cultural significance. Spanning the years from 1896 to 1976, the collection includes footage from around the globe of major events, famous faces, fashion trends, travel, science and culture.

The video archive includes all programming from the three C-SPAN's networks. Programming includes coverage for Congressional session 1987-present and has special indexing by person with full text transcripts.

View videos from HBR on the publication's own site or YouTube channel.

This site offers free, practical test-taking advice, and videos on a wide array of subjects and national tests (e.g. ASVAB, GRE, SAT, etc.).

The Scripps Library at the University of Virginia focuses on US Public Policy. Its streaming video collection contains State of the Union addresses from Kennedy to Obama. The multimedia archive also includes more than 2,500 hours of secret White House recordings, hundreds of presidential oral history interviews, and documents related to the executive branch of American government.

These programs feature prominent doctors presenting the latest health research on topics such as cancer, obesity, mental health, and sports medicine.

The Stanford online collection of videos, case vignettes, teaching, and learning resources are designed to enhance leadership development for individuals, organizations, and classrooms worldwide.