Cinema for Russian Conversation covers fourteen Russian language films in two volumes that are used as the basis for discussion and language acquisition, teaching vocabulary, strengthening oral and written skills, and as well as an introduction to Russian culture. The films (arranged in historical order) are selected to provide interesting viewing, key cultural information, and accessible language levels. Each chapter of the book is devoted to a single movie and includes aids for students watching the film, discussing and writing about the film, and understanding the film in a broader cultural context. Also included: vocabulary helpful to understanding and discussing the film; structured exercises in understanding the film once it has been viewed, especially for discussion in class; an accompanying reading for each film designed to provide perspective on the film itself.
Olga Kagan is Professor of Russian and Director of the National Heritage Language Resource Center, University of California, Los Angeles. The authors have also published other widely-used Russian language textbooks.
"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 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, Temple University
"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
