NOVA Libraries’ Feature Film Friday: Instant Family

NOVA Libraries is excited to continue Feature Film Friday, a series highlighting films that are available to the campus community through our video streaming collections. Each Friday, we will feature a different film being used by faculty to support college programming and coursework. All of the content in our video streaming collections is available for free to everyone in the NOVA community and can be accessed from anywhere. To learn more about these collections and how you can include streaming video in your courses, check out this Streaming Video Guide.

This week, we are highlighting the film Instant Family, which is used by Dr. Rebecca Walter in her CST-126: Interpersonal Communication course. Dr. Walter chose this film because its discussion of the foster care system and family challenges covers much of the same content as her class, particularly in terms of attachment theory/styles. She’s gotten excellent feedback about the film from students, who appreciate the movie’s use of comedy while exploring heavier subject matter, because it makes this content easier to digest. 

This week’s film is available for streaming through Swank Digital Campus, a platform that NOVA Libraries uses to purchase individual titles for classroom use. Although these films are primarily used for coursework, they can also be watched outside of class for fun, which we hope you’ll do with our featured films each week! Requests for Swank films are made during the spring semester, which is our annual Swank request period. For more information, contact Melanie Medina or Molly Anderson. If you’re already using a film from our video streaming collection in your course and want to be featured on a future Friday, please fill out this survey. Otherwise, keep an eye on the Daily Flyer to see what we spotlight next! 

Watch Instant Family on the Swank platform June 2023.

Submitted by:
Molly Anderson, WO-Instructional Librarian, MAnderson@nvcc.edu