Search Help

How does this work?
There are many ways to search the collections of the Freedom Archives. Below is a brief guide that will help you conduct effective searches. Note, anytime you search for anything in the Freedom Archives, the first results that appear will be our digitized items. Information for items that have yet to be scanned or yet to be digitized can still be viewed, but only by clicking on the show link that will display the hidden (non-digitized) items. If you are interested in accessing these non-digitized materials, please email info@freedomarchives.org.
Exploring the Collections without the Search Bar
Under the heading Browse By Collection, you’ll notice most of the Freedom Archives’ major collections. These collections have an image as well as a short description of what you’ll find in that collection. Click on that image to instantly explore that specific collection.
Basic Searching
You can always type what you’re looking for into the search bar. Certain searches may generate hundreds of results, so sometimes it will help to use quotation marks to help narrow down your results. For instance, searching for the phrase Black Liberation will generate all of our holdings that contain the words Black and Liberation, while searching for “Black Liberation” (in quotation marks) will only generate our records that have those two words next to each other.
Advanced Searching
The Freedom Archives search site also understands Boolean search logic. Click on this link for a brief tutorial on how to use Boolean search logic. Our search function also understands “fuzzy searches.” Fuzzy searches utilize the (*) and will find matches even when users misspell words or enter in only partial words for the search. For example, searching for liber* will produce results for liberation/liberate/liberates/etc.
Keyword Searches
You’ll notice that under the heading KEYWORDS, there are a number of words, phrases or names that describe content. Sometimes these are also called “tags.” Clicking on these words is essentially the same as conducting a basic search.

Search Results

Buena Vista Social Club Buena Vista Social Club
Date: 1/1/1999Call Number: V 051Format: VHSProducers: Artisan Entertainment, Road Movies Film Production, Wim Wenders, Ulrich Felsberg. Directors of photography Jörg Widmer, Robby Müller, edited by Brian Johnson.Collection: Videos in many formats – both camera originals as well as reference materials
In 1996 Ry Cooder gathered together some of the greatest names from the history of Cuban music to collaborate on the best selling and Grammy winning album Buena Vista Social Club. This ground-breaking documentary, inspired by the album, includes appearances by legendary performers Ry & Joaquim Cooder, Ibrahim Ferrer, Ruben Gonzáles, Eliades Ochoa, Omara Portuondo, Compay Segundo and many other renowned Cuban Musicians. Excited by these colorful characters and their extraordinary music, Wenders traveled to Havana, Cuba to chronicle the cooperation and camaraderie between Ry Cooder and his veteran friends - now known in Cuba as "los superabuelos" (the super-grandfathers) - as well as their dazzling sell-out concerts in Amsterdam and New York's Carnegie Hall in April and July 1998.