Film Platform: Relevant and Critically Acclaimed Documentary Films

The Penn Libraries is pleased to announce that the Penn community now has access to the documentary film streaming platform, Film Platform. Film Platform is a collection of social, political, and cultural documentaries, including award-winning documentary films and recent favorites from film festivals. Film Platform works with an academic advisory board to ensure that films uphold high educational standards and speak to topics that are part of recent debates or wider trends and changes in global culture. Our subscription to Film Platform will supplement other collections of streaming video to which the Penn Libraries already provide access, like Academic Video Online (AVON)or Kanopy, among many others listed on the Streaming from Penn Libraries tab of the Cinema & Media Studies Research Guide.

Film Platform is a collaborative effort of film distributors including ro*co films and Participant Media, both distributors who manage catalogs of quality documentary films that have received Academy Award nominations or film festival accolades.

It’s possible to search Film Platform films by keyword, country, language or or browse by genre. The collection features documentary films that are relevant to a number of fields, including African-American Studies, Environmental Studies, Jewish Studies, Urban Studies and Architecture, Political Science, Asian Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, Sociology, Engineering, Psychology, and Public Health. Note: Unlike Kanopy, films available through Film Platform do not appear in streaming directory apps, such as ReelGood or JustWatch, which are tools that inform Google search results for streaming film. Instead, browse Film Platform documentaries using Franklin.