Research on methods for detection and recognition of events and actions in videos is receiving an increasing attention from the scientific community, because of its relevance for many applications, from semantic video indexing to intelligent video surveillance systems and advanced human-computer interaction interfaces. Event detection and recognition requires to consider the temporal aspect of video, either at the low-level with appropriate features, or at a higher-level with models and classifiers than can represent time. In this paper we survey the field of event recognition, from interest point detectors and descriptors, to event modelling techniques and knowledge management technologies. We provide an overview of the methods, categorising them according to video production methods and video domains, and according to types of events and actions that are typical of these domains. Keywords video annotation · event classification · action classification · survey