LibGuides: Streaming Video: Finding videos (for students and faculty)

Faculty FAQ

Q: Can I show my class a film via my personal streaming account (i.e. Netflix, Amazon)?
A: It depends - this may be a violation of your contract with the content provider. Services such as these are often restricted to personal and non-commercial use only, so double-check your license agreement before proceeding.

Q: I'm teaching an online-only course, how can I show a film to my class?
A: Submit a Video Request/Reserve Form to see if the library may add a title to an existing vendor collection (Kanopy, Alexander Street Press, etc). Instructors may also ask students to purchase the film via a subscription service such as Netflix or Amazon. The University Library is not able to purchase licenses or subscriptions to any consumer platform: Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Disney+, etc.

Q: Can the library transfer a VHS to a DVD to streaming for me?
A: No. Copyright law doesn't allow the transfer of formats without permission of the copyright holder, and the library does not offer reformatting services.

Finding videos

Use OneSearch to find streaming videos (or DVDs/Blu-Rays). You can search by title, director, actor, etc. For example, to find Ben Affleck's streaming titles available at CSUN, search his name, limit to Video, and then Available Online at CSUN:

For titles that only appear as DVDs or Blu-rays, we are unable to stream these titles to a classroom, Zoom, or Canvas. We are also not able to rent or purchase titles from iTunes, Hulu, Netflix, Prime Video, etc. We may not add titles to Swank: our package is set at 1,000 titles, and will expire on June 30, 2023.

Using Kanopy through your public library

You can get a card for checking out items, or you can get an e-card, which allows you to stream films, borrow e-books, and listen to music. If you live in Los Angeles County, you may get an LAPL e-card. During normal operating procedures, anyone in the State of CA may get an LAPL card. You can have multiple accounts/memberships with Kanopy, such as LAPL plus CSUN or LA County Library plus CSUN. Please see this guide for more info.

More than 30,000 films are available to stream on Kanopy (LAPL) through Los Angeles Public Library.

Live within LA County but outside the City of Los Angeles? Sign up for an LA County Library card.

If you live in Ventura, Orange, or LA County, you can sign up for a Beverly Hills Public Library card.

The City of Orange Public Library offers e-cards to California residents.

Newport Beach Public Library also offers e-cards to California residents.

Berkeley Public Library offers e-cards to California residents.

Riverside County Library System has Kanopy and is available for all California residents.

Fresno County Library offers Kanopy to its residents, with instant e-cards.

San Joaquin Valley Library System (7 counties including Madera, Stanislaus, and Merced) offers Kanopy plus instant e-cards.

Sonoma County Library offers e-cards for residents of the County.

Streaming Video Collections at CSUN

Academic Video Online This link opens in a new window Over 30,000 hours of streaming videos covering a wide range of subjects.
African Diaspora, 1860-Present This link opens in a new window Primary source documents, including personal papers, organizational papers, journals, newsletters, court documents, letters, and ephemera about migrations of people of African descent to countries around the world, from the 19th century to present day.
Asian Film Online This link opens in a new window Through a selection of over 1,000 narrative feature films, documentaries and shorts curated by film scholars and critics, the collection offers highly relevant perspectives and insights onto themes relevant across Asia, including modernity, globalization, female agency, social and political unrest, and cultural and sexual identity.
BBC Shakespeare in Perspective This link opens in a new window
Black Studies in Video This link opens in a new window Streaming video database with over 500 hours of documentaries, newsreels, interviews and archival footage surveying the evolution of black culture in the United States.
Border and Migration Studies Online This link opens in a new window
C-SPAN Video Library This link opens in a new window A searchable library of over 200,000 hours of videos from all three C-SPAN networks covering federal politics in the United States.
Counseling and Therapy in Video (Alexander Street Press) This link opens in a new window
Dance Online: Dance Studies Collection This link opens in a new window The only collection of curated primary and secondary full-text materials to support informed performance, pedagogy, and scholarship in dance. Dance Online: Dance Studies Collection presents the historical context of 20th and 21st century dance through 150,000 pages of exclusive photographs, correspondence, magazines, dance notation, and reference material that dissolve the distance between archive and scholar and draw dance students into the library
Disability in the Modern World This link opens in a new window
Docuseek2 This link opens in a new window Docuseek2 provides access to hundreds of streaming education videos from a variety of producers and distributors. You can search for a specific title or keyword, or browse videos by theme or title.
Education in Video (Alexander Street Press) This link opens in a new window
Environmental Studies in Video (Alexander Street Press) This link opens in a new window
Ethnographic Video Online (Alexander Street Press) This link opens in a new window
Filmakers Online This link opens in a new window Provides award-winning documentaries with relevance across the curriculum—race and gender studies, human rights, globalization and global studies, multiculturalism, international relations, criminal justice, the environment, bioethics, health, political science and current events, psychology, arts, literature, and more. It presents points of view and historical and current experiences from diverse cultures and traditions world-wide.
Film Platform This link opens in a new window Over 600 documentary films distributed by Roco Films
Films on Demand This link opens in a new window Multidisciplinary streaming video service providing access to digital educational films. Current access includes over 700 videos in many subject areas.
Great Speeches Video Series This link opens in a new window
Health and Society in Video (Alexander Street Press) This link opens in a new window
Human Rights Studies Online This link opens in a new window A research and learning database providing comprehensive, comparative documentation, analysis, and interpretation of major human rights violations and atrocity crimes worldwide. The collection is growing to include 75,000 pages of text and 150 hours of video that give voice to the countless victims of human rights crimes in the 20th and early 21st centuries.
Kanopy This link opens in a new window
Kanopy offers a number of videos that may be viewed online, through an app, or using Roku or Apple TV. Please note that the first time you use Kanopy via CSUN, you need to log in at csun.kanopy.com.
Latin America in Video This link opens in a new window
LGBT Studies in Video (Alexander Street Press) This link opens in a new window
Music Online: Opera in Video (Alexander Street Press) This link opens in a new window
National Theatre Collection This link opens in a new window Through a collaboration with the U.K.'s National Theatre, this collection offers high definition streaming video of productions and unique archival material offering significant insight into theatre and performance studies.
PBS Video Collection This link opens in a new window This collection of more than 1,200 streaming videos provides an exceptional range of content with the most valuable video documentaries and series from PBS.
Shoah Foundation Institute Visual History Archive This link opens in a new window Users must create an individual account in order to use this resource. A fully streaming video collection of more than 53,000 primary source testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other crimes against humanity, including the Nanjing Massacre, the Guatemalan Genocide, the Armenian Genocide, and the Tutsi Genocide.
Sony Pictures Classics This link opens in a new window More than 300 Sony Pictures Classics films from 1992 to 2015. Their catalog offers world cinema titles, and includes a strong emphasis on documentary, including works by filmmakers such as Louis Malle, Wim Wenders, Francis Ford Coppola, Ang Lee, Mike Leigh, Asghar Farhadi, Roman Polanski, Michael Haneke, David Cronenberg, Eric Rohmer, Terry Gilliam, Ismail Merchant, Errol Morris, Ingmar Bergman, Pedro Almodovar, and others.
Swank Digital Campus This link opens in a new window Swank is the world's largest non-theatrical distributor of motion pictures for public performance and the acknowledged leader in the field.

Swank (in OneSearch)
This link will show you all 1,000 titles in Swank available at CSUN, easily accessible using OneSearch.

Theatre in Video (Alexander Street Press) This link opens in a new window

Free streaming trials (NOT AFFILIATED WITH CSUN)

Free films through MUBI
Use your CSUN email address to create a free account with MUBI, which offers a different collection of 30 films per month.
Hoopla
Available through several public libraries including Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, Hoopla offers streaming films and television, plus audiobooks and other content.
Hulu
Hulu offers a 7-day trial.
Netflix
Netflix offers a 30-day trial
Prime Student
If you do not already have Amazon Prime, you can sign up for 6 months free as a student and then pay half-price for a paid account.