Spiro Kostof was a member of the faculty of the Department of Architecture from 1965 to 1991. A dedicated teacher and brilliant lecturer, he inspired an entire generation of architecture students. …Although Kostof's scholarly activities were prodigious, his first love was teaching. Allan Temko, architecture critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, has described Kostof's gifts most succinctly: “Spiro Kostof is not only a great architectural historian, but one of the supreme teachers of our time... There is no question about the profound impact that Professor Kostof has had on students over the past quarter century. Wonderfully free of academic hauteur and pedantry, he has provided them with fresh insights into vernacular architecture at the same time that he has brilliantly analyzed the most important monuments in the world.” The thousands of students who studied with him--or who toured history and architecture with him through slides and words--were profoundly touched by his vision. His ideas were propelled by the dazzling and dramatic lecture style that transformed what others might have seen as mundane into provocative observations. In his lecture courses and seminars, he was a demanding teacher, but he never demanded more from others than he did from himself. Even after decades of teaching the survey of architecture and urbanism, he would work until early in the morning rewriting the text for the following day's lecture or assembling its images. [from Calisphere ]

It is fortunate for the Berkeley campus and for future generations of architectural students and scholars that a series of colorful and enlightening lectures from Kostof’s 1991 Architecture 170 class  were captured on video tape. The Media Resources Center has recently digitized these and made them available for online viewing.

Brief descriptions of the lectures and links to online video are posted HERE .

Kostof's Spring 1987 Commencement address is posted HERE

One of the cool things about the DVD format has been the extras, supplements, and bells & whistles that frequently come packed with the feature. In recent years, these supplements have often expanded to mind-boggling proportions. (Check out the four additional discs that come with the newest release of Blade Runner, for example (MRC DVD 9222)). In many cases, the add-ons can be incredibly annoying--little more than aimless and boring commentaries, dull out-takes, and publicity fluff. In other cases, the extra stuff is an incredible boon. A good example of the latter can be found accompanying the recent spate of classic 1930s and 40's Warner Brothers and MGM films on DVD. Many of these discs contain period newsreels, obscure shorts, and--best of all--cartoons from the period that are available nowhere else. For a listing of these "comes-with" toons, check out our videography at http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/warnertoons.html

Apple has announced that new releases from major film studios will be available for rental or sale through the iTunes store on the same day as their DVD release.

That includes new releases and catalog titles from 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Sony Pictures Entertainment, among others.

New movies available this week include "American Gangster" and "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly." Movies can be previewed, purchased and watched on a Mac or PC, iPod devices, the iPhone and on a widescreen TV with Apple TV.

To date, Apple offers 1,500 films on iTunes, including 200 in high-definition video.

Click to read this article on the MediaPostPublications.com website.

If the events of September 11, 2001 were defining moments of the last century, they have also been among the most widely documented and scrutinized. The dust had not settled in the World Trade Center crater before filmmakers began to spool out post-mortems and laments. The years following 9/11 have seen countless documentary inquiries, ranging from memorials and tributes, to condemnations of the civil liberty infringements of the "war on terror", to countless conspiracy theories accounting for "why the towers fell."

The Media Resources Center has attempted to collect a wide range of materials representing the personal, civil, and international responses to 9/11. The collection includes 24-hour coverage of the events by CNN and Fox News, as well as presidential speeches and news conferences made in the days following. MRC has also attempted to collect a sampling of documentaries dealing with the impact of 9/11 on ethnic communities in the US, and documentaries by filmmakers critical of the US response to the events. We've also acquired a number of the stranger conspiracy explanations of the events of September 11.

A complete listing of MRC 9/11 holdings can be found at http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/terrorism.html together with documentary works dealing with other contemporary and historical international acts of terrorism.

 

The Media Resources Center (Moffitt Library) is pleased to announce a new database which allows browsing of the complete MRC Online Media Collection (about 210 titles at present). The collection includes both titles licensed for streaming to UC Berkeley users only (CalNet ID and password required), and those which are open for viewing/listening by all users.

The MRC Online Media Collection includes both video and audio resources, including important documentaries, UCB symposia and conferences, and primary source media (including sound recordings from the Free Speech Movement and other political movements in the SF Bay Area)

The database is at http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/onlinemedia.html

Enjoy browsing!