Free to use video collection

I had stumbled across the Open Video Project (www.open-video.org) website before, but this time I have to share: The Open Video project is an amazing endeavour offering  hundreds of video clips free. The users may use them for whatever they want, but I have to say that for educaional purposes the resource is great.

In their own words: "The purpose of the Open Video Project is to collect and make available a repository of digitized video content for the digital video, multimedia retrieval, digital library, and other research communities."

Unfortunately for those in the Arts areas, the website focuses much more on science and history that on any visual or performative art. Literature is missing too. But the Project has the possibilities and it can hopefully integrate artistic issues in a very near future. It would be a waste of resources not to take that opportunity.

Just for the sake of it, I would recommend all the NASA clips, especially those related to the Mars exploration. The Edison clips are also great. A very funny one was shot by Thomas Edison in 1903 and shows a vaudeville show. At some point a man comes out to the stage and starts reading something. Apparently the audience doesn't like it because they start throwing him hats and other objects. The man leaves and comes back with an umbrella. Things get so bad that eventually the man has to be dragged away from the stage. Crazy stuff from 100 years ago.

links: digg this    del.icio.us    technorati    reddit