Films and Media at the Language Commons (LC)

The LC allows students to watch DVDs on site if the film is not in our streaming collection. Faculty are allowed to check out DVDs for two weeks. Our catalogs are periodically updated. Please contact the director to ask about our newest arrivals. 

• Browse our DVD Collection

• Browse our Streaming Collection

  • only available in the LC
  • log into Guest account on a Mac or PC, open the program Kodi, look for titles under "videos"

• Browse our Book Collection

Film Resources for Online Courses

As UH has not made a statement of official policy when it comes to the use of copyrighted video for online courses, the Language Commons gives the following recommendations:

• Kanopy is a streaming video resource available to instructors wishing to use streaming video in their courses. To request access please use the Streaming Media Request form.
• If the film is available for streaming, rent, or purchase on a commercial site like Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, or FilmStruck, require students to purchase a subscription for the duration of the course or to rent/buy the film. Include this as part of the required course materials.
• If the film has a digital streaming purchase option, request that from the LC. This is becoming more common for independent documentary films and may or may not have a time limit (for an example, see the documentaries at New Day Digital).  
• If the film is available for free on an official channel on YouTube, Vimeo, or other video hosting site, you can link to that in your Blackboard course (for example, the Mosfilm studio makes many of their Soviet films available for free on their YouTube site).

Unfortunately, we are unable to make the DVDs and VHS in our collection available to be streamed online, as creating a digital copy for distribution on the Internet (even through a password-protected site like Blackboard) would constitute copyright infringement.