Cinema for Russian Conversation, Volume 2

Description

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 coordinator of the undergraduate of the Russian Program at UCLA. She is the author and co-author of numerous successful textbooks. Mara Kashper is the senior associate in Russian at Columbia University. A graduate of Leningrad State University, she is co-author of Lidiya Chukovskaya's "Sofia Petrovna" and "Reading and Speaking About Russian Newspapers" from Focus Publishing. Yuliya Morozova was a graduate student at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, UCLA

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