This collection includes ethnographic films produced or shot by the pioneering visual anthropologist, Paul Hockings. It covers films shot by Hockings as part of his reasearch on the Badaga people in the Nilgiris Hills in India; THE VILLAGE shot in western Ireland, on which Hockings was the consulting anthropologist; and work created under his mentorship at the University of Illinois at Chicago including Susan Stechnij's examination of a Mexican immigrant family, MI RAZA: PORTRAIT OF A FAMILY.

The Susan Dobinsky Collection consists of outtakes and elements from an unfinished film made about murals in Chicago shot during 1988-1991. The footage captures murals in the neighborhoods of Pilsen, Little Village, West Town, and Humboldt Park during this time; accompanying audio tapes feature interviews with local artists. The unfinished film was spearheaded by Dobinsky and Julia Kurtz and funded primarily through a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, and supported by filmmakers Ronn Bayly and Susan Regele's then Chicago-based company Lightbound, which was active from 1980-1990.