Modern Culture and Media (MCM) holds archives of 35mm, 16mm, and 8mm films totalling 3,600,000 feet; a small microfilm collection; Betacam SP, ¾” U-matic, VHS, Laser Disc, DVD, and Bluray videos; video games; digital videos in various file formats, audio tapes, slides, photos, paper collections, as well as exhibition equipment such as slide, 8mm, 16mm, and video projectors.

The film collections are a legacy teaching collection, consisting primarily of 16mm projection prints, but also some 35mm and 8mm prints; 16mm student productions, including original camera negatives, workprints, and projection prints. The circulating video library contains over 6,000 titles that are used for teaching and research. 

The collection spans multiple genres, periods, and countries, and includes rare prints of works by Robert Altman, Chantal Akerman, Sara Gomez, Ousmane Sembene, and Abbas Kiarostami alongside Classical Hollywood favorites of Alfred Hitchcock, French New Wave films by Agnes Varda, Chris Marker, and more. 

The MCM archives continue to expand to meet the needs of the department. An undergraduate seminar in theories and practices of audiovisual archiving, MCM 1204K, is taught by the MCM Archivist each year. 

The collections are separate from Brown University’s library and museum holdings. They are housed in facilities managed by MCM.

For information on accessing these collections for research, study, or screenings, or to consider donating media to the archives, please contact: