Critical Past is an online film archive with over 57,000 film clips and 7 million images available to view online. The films on the site are from as early as the 1890s and continue on through to the 1990s, many of them produced by the United States government. Unfortunately, the clips on the site cannot be embedded, but a quick search of “psychology” turns up 94 films, including an amazing two and half minute film clip from 1917 of some of the more than 1.7 million American soldiers who completed the Army Alpha and Beta intelligence tests (left). Also appearing in these search results are a series of film clips from 1953 of psychologist Kenneth Clark interviewing Martin Luther King, Jr. (here and here), Malcolm X (here and here), and James Baldwin (here, here, and here) about issues concerning the civil rights movement in the United States. There are also a number of other films on the site from the 1950s featuring American soldiers undergoing psychiatric treatment (here, here, here, here, and here). Pick your own keyword and explore some of the amazing films featured on this site.

Thanks to Cathy Faye for bringing this site to AHP’s attention.