“Rashomon,” “Employment Law in Action,” “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” “The Politics of Infant Feeding,” “Watership Down,” “Welding Metallic Materials,” “Donnie Darko.”

These are all films available on the Kanopy streaming film service through the UAF Rasmuson Library site or directly at uaf.kanopy.com.

Starting in summer of 2018, the UAF Rasmuson Library made these and 20,000 other films available through the Kanopy streaming film service. Kanopy is a deep well of curated, high-quality content. It has things other streaming services don’t, including a friendly interface with a watchlist and recommendation algorithms to help you find films aligned with your interests.

The film library content ranges from art films to early cinema to technical how-to videos. It’s organized by genre, including documentaries, independent and foreign films, current affairs, theatre, business, Great Courses, K12 lessons, and language learning. UAF faculty, staff and students enrolled in UAF courses need only their UAF credentials for access.

The Kanopy streaming service offers a number of advantages to faculty showing films for face-to-face or online classes. Rather than ask students to pay for a streaming service subscription or try to track down free movies, films available as part of the Kanopy streaming service can be selected and students have direct access.

Kanopy features mobile apps for iOS, Apple TV, Roku, Android, and Kindle Fire and Fire TV.
Kanopy allows users to create their own playlists or make clips from films. Clips can be shared specifically or embedded, such as on a Blackboard or WordPress site. Kanopy films also have public performance rights, so they can be shown at events or other gatherings, as long as no admission is charged.

Films also feature a comments section, listing the poster’s full name and institution. Closed captions and transcripts are included with each film, and there’s a citation tool to help with bibliography production. Kanopy also operates well on low-bandwidth connections with adaptive bitrate streaming.
In addition to including films or clips from films in your course, possible activities for students might include:

• Posting film critiques as a public comment on the film.
• Creating custom clips and sharing them to a discussion board.
• Building playlists of films based on theme or personal interest.

For more information, contact Collection Development Officer Karen Jensen or Instructional Designer Sean Holland.