Hemispheric Institute Digital Video Library
The Hemispheric Institute Digital Video Library (HIDVL) is the first major digital video library of performance practices in the Americas. Created in partnership with NYU Libraries and with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, this growing repository guarantees historical preservation and free, online access to almost 900 hours of video through the Hemispheric Institute website. A trilingual Profile (English, Spanish and Portuguese) is created for each collection, contextualizing the videos with detailed production information, synopses, image galleries, texts, interviews, bibliographies and additional materials. Artists and organizations always retain the copyright to all their videos, as well as the original material, which is returned after digitization. With video documentation spanning from the 1970’s to the present, the collections seek to promote dialogue and a deeper understanding of performance and politics in the Americas.
The partnership between NYU Libraries and the Hemispheric Institute began as a collaborative effort to preserve Latin American political theater and performance works captured on video, making these cultural documents available worldwide. The Hemispheric Institute Digital Video Library captures data in the highest-quality possible, which guarantees potential migrations to new formats in the future. This process preserves HIDVL materials for 500 years. To read Apple.com's article on HIDVL's technology, open the file below.
Please see the sections below to navigate the HIDVL content. To see an alphabetical index of artist and scholars whose work is found in HIDVL, see the menu above. To see the complete catalog of our video collections, go to the HIDVL platform.
Apple.com HIDVL Article
Artist Profiles
We have created a trilingual profile for each artist, group or organization that has shared their collection for preservation in HIDVL. These profiles, often curated in collaboration with the artists, aim to contextualize the videos with images, texts, performance ephemera (such as playbills or postcards), bibliographies and additional resources that viewers and researchers might find useful. Because the profiles are in English, Spanish and Portuguese, they ensure wider accessibility to audiences across the Americas.
Interviews
Our collections include interviews with artists, scholars and activists from across the Americas. This section features curated interview series such as the What is Performance Studies? collection, the Native Theater Festival collection, and the Colombian Theaters collection. In addition you can access individual interviews conducted during Encuentros, at the Hemispheric Institute in New York City, or at affiliated cultural centers, and institutions.
Additional Performances
This section contains additional performances that are in HIDVL but are not part of a specific artist collection. These performances have been presented at various Hemispheric Institute events, such as our Encuentros, our center in New York City and affiliated institutions.
Lectures and Presentations
This section features a curated selection of lectures and presentations that are included in the HIDVL collections. Some of this featured content also appears in Artist Profiles or Encuentro collections but are highlighted here for users who may be interested in researching education, academic presentations, keynotes or round table discussions of associated artists, scholars, and activists.
Encuentros
Every two years, the Hemispheric Institute hosts an Encuentro—part academic conference, part performance festival—in a different site in the Americas. Fostering experimentation, dialogue, and collaboration, each Encuentro brings together approximately hundreds of scholars, artists, activists and students to take part in a week-long program of keynote lectures, work groups, performances, installations, roundtable discussions, visual arts exhibits, video screenings and hands-on performance workshops. Past thematic topics of the Encuentros have been: “Performance and Politics in the Americas” (2000), “Memory, Atrocity, and Resistance” (2001), “Globalization, Migration and the Public Sphere” (2002), “Spectacles of Religiosities” (2003), “Performing 'Heritage': Contemporary Indigenous Performance and Community-Based Practices” (2005), “Corpolíticas/Body Politics: Formations of Race, Class and Gender in the Americas” (2007), “Staging Citizenship: Performance and Politics of Cultural Rights” (2009), "Cities | Bodies | Action: The Politics of Passion in the Americas" (2013) and "MANIFEST! Choreographing Social Movements in the Americas" (2014).
Copyright Statement
Materials of the Hemispheric Institute Digital Video Library are protected by copyright. They may not be copied, downloaded, or reproduced. The owner of this work has granted NYU Libraries non-exclusive rights to include this material in the Hemispheric Institute Digital Video Library and to make it accessible to the public for educational and research purposes. Requests to purchase or for permission to use the work should be directed to the owner. In each page that displays a video on hidvl.nyu.edu you will find the contact information of the copyright owners.