This year, DKU library has successfully subscribed to Lumière https://lumiere.berkeley.edu/home, a free film platform previously known as the Library of Foreign Language Film Clips. This complimentary service, created by the Berkeley Language Center at the University of California, Berkeley, contains around 3,800 films in over 100 languages. Some of the films already contain clips cut and teaching plans for language and culture teaching. All faculty members at DKU can apply for an account and use clips from the database as part of their foreign language and film studies course curriculum, and those resources can only be made available to students within the university’s learning management system, Canvas.
Films Available at DKU
In alignment with U.S. Copyright Law’s fair use provisions, UC Berkeley mandates all subscribing institutions must possess the corresponding physical DVD to gain access to full films and clips within the database. Upon reviewing Lumière’s collection and DKU’s DVD/Blu-Ray collection, it was determined that only 70 films match precisely in title, distributor, time and release date. Consequently, our DKU community has complete access to these 70 films and their associated clips and teaching plans.
Creating an Account
Faculty members at DKU can apply for an account using this link: https://lumiere.berkeley.edu/apply. The application process requires you to provide your full name, DKU-affiliated email address(which should be your DKU email address), user institution (Duke Kunshan University) and the Department URL that displays your faculty profile at DKU. During the application process, you will be asked to choose a language, presumably the language you teach. You can only have one language selected at a time in your user profile, but you will be able to find all other languages’ resources. Upon approval of your application, you will receive an email with your login credentials.
Ordering Films and Clips for Student Viewing
Currently, DKU faculty can order any of the 70 films and their corresponding clips. Whether searching or browsing, once you select a film or clip—for instance, “A Wrinkle in Time”—you will see an button to “Add A Wrinkle in Time to order” on the right side of the page. Clicking this will prompt you to fill in relevant course information and options for students’ comments.
After adding one or few clips or movies to your order cart, you can “Submit Order” collectively. You will be sent an email with URLs to the ordered clips or movies within 30 minutes. Lumière requires that these links be added directly to Canvas; emailing them to students directly is not permitted.
A user-friendly feature of the database is the keyword tagging system. Instructors can search with terms relevant to their curriculum, such as “wedding,” “apology,” and “crime,” making the integration of this resource into lessons both fluid and intuitive.
Expanding DKU’s Accessibility to Films in Lumière
Considering that Lumière only digitizes a small amount of UC Berkeley’s media resources, which are considerably more extensive than those of DKU, there are several ways to enlarge DKU’s film access in Lumière. Here are lists of different situations:
| Lumiere | Berkeley Library | DKU | Action | |
| Film 1 | Yes | Yes | No | Submit order request to DKU library |
| Film 2 | No | Yes | No | Submit order request to DKU library; Request new film in Lumiere with Berkeley library collection’s link |
| Film 3 | No | Yes | Yes | Request new film in Lumiere with Berkeley library collection’s link |
| Film 4 | No | No | Yes | Request new film in Lumiere with vendor’s link |
| Film 5 | No | No | No | Submit order request to DKU library; request new film in Lumiere with vendor’s link |
For more information or additional guidance, feel free to check out Lumière’s help page at https://lumiere.berkeley.edu/help or contact Research and Instruction Librarian, Mengjie Zou, at mengjie.zou@dukekunshan.edu.cn.
