By Amy Abraham, Liz Stalker and Lily Wooters
With Covid-19 hitting campus hard and the importance of social distancing growing every day, there’s not a whole lot left for students to do outside of classes. We need to find a safe way to relax without breaking the bank. Fortunately, UofSC’s Educational Films Department offers many free streaming services for students to view a wide variety of films.
Accessing these services has never been easier. All you have to do is visit library.sc.edu, select databases, and under All Content Types, select Audio & Video. The resources are listed alphabetically, so just click on the hyperlink, log in with your UofSC network user and password, and get watching!
You may be wondering, But what kinds of films are available? These are academic resources, so surely most of them will be stuffy and boring. That is not the case at all! The databases Swank and Kanopy provide a huge variety of films to watch. With Swank, you can access many mainstream popular films that we all know and love. Go to space with 2001: A Space Odyssey, psych yourself out with a horror movie like The Exorcist, or shut off your brain and watch a comedy like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Kanopy is definitely the more highbrow academic of the two, offering extensive educational and documentary resources in addition to critically acclaimed features. Kanopy’s Criterion Collection brags of 424 award-winning classic and contemporary films from all around the world, straight from the masters of film themselves. Additionally, there are documentaries about everything from David Bowie to the woman who originated Big Bird on Sesame Street. There’s even a category for book to film adaptations, like Sherlock Holmes or The Miseducation of Cameron Post. If you’re looking to educate yourself on systemic oppression and become a better ally, look no further. Kanopy provides a plethora of films about social justice and minority communities that provide a unique perspective on complex issues.
If neither Swank nor Kanopy sounds interesting to you, there are seventeen other databases to choose from, each with its own distinctive niche to fill. For example, Ethnographic Video Online streams video content about cultures from all around the world, including stories directly from individuals. Counseling and Therapy in Video provides an insight into how therapy works and the different techniques providers use to treat patients.
Whatever you’re interested in, UofSC’s wide array of streaming services can give you access to all the audio-visual entertainment your heart desires. The vast selection of films is enough to make any Netflix user jealous, and all for the low price of free. Whether you want to watch a classic comfort film like Casablanca, a critically acclaimed film like Moonlight, or something thrilling and bone-chilling like Hereditary, Kanopy and Swank can deliver. If you’re in the mood for something spooky this fall, make sure to join us for the “Haunted Moms” online film series, hosted by the University of South Carolina Honors College, co-sponsored by Women’s and Gender Studies, and available through Educational Films at USofC. It’s sure to be a scream.