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Cinema for Russian Conversation, Volumes 1 and 2

Cinema for Russian Conversation: Volumes 1 and 2

Olga Kagan

UCLA

Mara Kashper

Barnard College/Columbia University

Yuliya Morozova

Each of this two-volume series presents seven films in historical order. Each chapter focuses on one film and includes assignments ranging from Intermediate to Advanced Plus proficiency according to the ACTFL guidelines. The modular structure allows instructors to select the films according to the students’ interests and course goals, as textbooks or as supplemental materials for classes at various levels. While the books’ main purpose is to development conversation skills, each chapter includes texts for reading comprehension and exercises that focus on the acquisition of written skills and grammatical accuracy.

|  About the Authors  |  Contents  |  Preface |  Review |

Volume 1

2005 • 1-58510-118-4 • paper • 202 pages •  8½ x 11 • $29.95

Volume 2

2005 • 1-58510-119-2 • paper • 183 pages •  8½ x 11 • $29.95

For purchasing or renting the films: Information for finding the films to rent or purchase can be found here. Be sure to search for the films under the Russian title, or the English translation of the title, as some films are listed either way.

 Description                                             

For departments of Russian offering courses in Russian language and conversation at the Intermediate to Advanced level, or survey of Russian cinema in Russian.

 Authors                                                   

Olga Kagan is coordinator of the undergraduate Russian Program at UCLA. She is the author and co-author of numerous successful Russian textbooks, including the Focus edition Lidiya Chukovskaya’s Sofia Petrovna.

Mara Kashper teaches Russian at Barnard College/Columbia University and is the co-author of Lidiya Chukovskaya’s Sofia Petrovna and another Focus title: Reading and Speaking about Russian Newspapers.

Yuliya Morozova is a graduate student at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, UCLA.

     We selected the films for the books based on several criteria. We chose films that are representative of a variety of periods, themes, and genres, and that cover over seventy years of Russian film making, from the 1930s into the 21st century. While most of the films were made in the Soviet period, several were made after the fall of the Soviet Union and reflect new realities of Russian life. All films are well known in Russia and many have become classics.

     Accessibility was another criterion for selection. All the films are of general human interest and universal appeal. Each has an accessible plot, and most are available with subtitles.

     Each film is accompanied by twenty or more assignments and tasks to provide flexibility for students and instructors. The assignments can be used for homework or classroom activities. They are arranged in increasing order of difficulty and sophistication corresponding to levels specified in the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines. Intermediate level assignments ask students to read a paragraph, view a clip, answer factual questions, and provide a short description. Exercises calling for higher proficiency involve detailed description, narration, expressing supported opinion, and hypothesizing.

     Cinema for Russian Conversation by Mara Kashper, Olga Kagan, and Yuliya Morozova, is a brilliant conversation book for intermediate and advanced Russian language courses.  Previous books in this area lacked sufficient input for students; this book solves that problem by using precisely those films that teachers of Russian have already been using for years in their classrooms.  The films in Volume 1 include The Cranes Are Flying, Ivan Vasilievich Changes Jobs, The Irony of Fate, Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears, and Fall Marathon, among others.  The films in Volume 2 include Adam’s Rib, Prisoner of the Caucasus, The Thief, and East-West, among others.  The book provides ample support for students to talk about films in Russian and leads students through intermediate level “who-what-where-when” questions before proceeding to more challenging “why” and “how” questions for discussion and written analysis.  Each chapter presents background information on the chapter’s film (when it was made, who directed it, which actors played the leading and supporting roles, what prizes it may have won, and so forth).  Learning tasks in each chapter include sequencing of events (with events described in Russian, providing students with more input), matching still frames from the film to lines from the film’s dialogue, questions about each segment of the film (with supporting vocabulary), open-ended descriptions, identification of key lines from the film, word puzzles, and extension activities such as writing about a particular scene or a particular image.  Each chapter also includes translation excercises (from Russian to English and English to Russian) and creative learning tasks such as the production of a video advertisement for the film, a composition on a topic related to the film.  Students are encouraged to write their own film reviews and submit them to a film forum discussion on a Russian website.   The progression of activities leads beautifully from highly supported (and constrained) tasks requiring limited Russian fluency to open-ended and minimally supported tasks in which students can write and speak extensively and quite creatively.  The selection of films is beautiful:  these are many of the films we have been using in our Russian language classrooms already, but without substantial pedagogical support for doing so. Cinema for Russian Conversation provides just that support:  it is an outstanding contribution for the Russian language curriculum.  

-- Benjamin Rifkin, University of Wisconsin-Madison

      As language instructors, we have all used film in our classes to improve the linguistic and cultural proficiency of our students. A few textbooks include clips from Russian cinema with some exercises fro comprehension and discussion; however, until now there has been no text which deals exclusively with film as a language and culture acquisition tool. Cinema for Russian Conversation has now filled this void with a two-volume series... The choice of films is excellent: they are classics, dating from 1936-1979, seen and loved by Russian audiences, and they include a variety of genres (musical comedy, fairy tale, drama, comedy and melodrama).... the content of each exercise is varied so as not to become repetitive. All the directions for the exercises are given in clear and concise Russian (absolutely essential for students). The text is in modular form so that one need not cover all the films in the order in which they appear in the book. One could "pick and choose" the films to coincide with the content and focus of the course.

     Cinema for Russian Conversation is an excellent addition to available materials for use in the classroom of a language, culture, film, or conversation course.

-- Slavic and East European Journal, Volume 49, #4, Winter 2005.