talk talkie online?

April 23, 2009 4:11 PM

Where can I find old foreign film footage?

I'm looking for old (1930's), foreign language and obscure film footage for commercial non-broadcast use. It should be very verbose/ talkie type of material.
I'm not broadcasting it, but using it for web. I know I would still need to buy the license and rights to use.
Where could I find this online or anywhere?

Thanks!

posted by octomato to media & arts (5 comments total)

Gaumont Pathé may have what you're looking for.
posted by gimonca at 4:32 PM on April 23 [1 favorite has favorites]

Probably not an exact match, but there is a ton of obscure foreign stuff on ubu.com. You have trolled through archive.org, right?
posted by rumsey monument at 4:38 PM on April 23

Europa Film Treasures may be a good source for what you're looking to find. I casually perused their Terms of Use and noted that the featured films are for non-commercial use. But the site is really just an online face for various European film archives, so you may be able to obtain permissions/licenses/wevs through the individual archives.
posted by carsonb at 4:47 PM on April 23 [1 favorite has favorites]

The Internet Archive is the standard source for this kind of thing - public-domain films of any era. They have 32 films from 1920-1940 whose descriptions mention the word "French," 61 that mention "German," and 20 that mention "Russian."
posted by koeselitz at 6:20 PM on April 23

Their advanced search page is pretty handy for this kind of search, by the way. Also, keep in mind that, since these films are all public domain, you actually won't have to buy any licenses or pay any fees to use footage for any purpose whatsoever.

Some of my favorites from the searches I linked:
Bronenosets Potyomkin ('Battleship Potemkin') - Sergei Eisenstein (1925) [AMG review]
Faust: Eine deutsche Volkssage ('Faust: A German Folktale') - F. W. Murnau (1926) [AMG review]
Vormittagsspuk ('Ghosts Before Breakfast') - Hans Richter (1927) [AMG review]
Generalnaya Liniya ('The General Line') - Sergei Eisenstein and Grigori Aleksandrov (1929) [AMG review]
Chelovek s kinoapparatom ('Man With A Movie Camera') - Dziga Vertov (1929) [AMG review]
A propos de Nice ('About Nice') - Jean Vigo (1930) [AMG review]
Le sang d'un poète ('The Blood of a Poet') - Jean Cocteau (1930) [AMG review]
M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Moerder ('M: A City Looks for a Murderer') - Fritz Lang (1931) [AMG review]
Oktyabr
Niemandsland ('No Man's Land') - Victor Trivas (1931) [AMG review]

Zéro de conduite ('Zero for Conduct') - Jean Vigo (1933) [AMG review]
Tri Pesni o Lenine ('Three Songs of Lenin') - Dziga Vertov (1934) [AMG review]
Alexander Nevskiy - Sergei Eisenstien (1938) [AMG review]
Olympia 1. Teil - Fest der Völker and Olympia 2. Teil - Fest der Schönheit ('Olympiad 1 - Celebration of the Peoples' and 'Olympiad 2 - Celebration of Beauty') - Leni Riefenstahl (1938) [AMG review]
posted by koeselitz at 8:05 PM on April 23