Cultural Studies The Prompt

The Prompt

You will watch one Soviet era movie and one contemporary  Russian movie. The goal for this assignment is for you to notice Russian culture. You need to avoid the blockbuster mobster or otherwise violent movies.  They do not show much about real Russian lives.  For guidance on which films to choose, I would choose a Russian's suggestions.  Here are two links:  IMDb    or  RBTH   , but there are many more out there. I would try YouTube or Google Best Russian and Best Soviet Movies.

Please, try to respond to the following questions for each film (if some of them are not applicable, then add something else to your response):

1. What did you notice about the lifestyles portrayed in the films?

2.  Did you notice the living conditions?

3. What did you learn about work in Russia or in the Soviet Union?

4.  How did the characters spend their free-time?

5.  What did you notice about relationships with parents, spouse, children and friends?

6. What other elements of culture did you notice?

7. Can you compare your life to the lives in the Russian/Soviet films?  What was different?

8.  A broad question:  Now that you have learned various aspects about the Russian culture, what would you tell somebody that asked you what you learned about Russia?

A Sample Post:

Little Vera

COLLAPSE

Top of Form

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Vera

Plot:

This was the first Soviet film that I could identify with.  It was released in 1988.  I was a freshly-minted college graduate with the unkind knowledge that a BA in Soviet Studies was not going to get me too far.  I enjoyed watching how young people lived in the Soviet Union at that time.  I had recently returned from 3 months living in Leningrad/Moscow and felt that the drama and dreary/depressed background well represented what I had just experienced while living in the Soviet Union.  Little Vera in Russian means of "little faith".  Certainly that title was not mistakenly chosen.  Vera graduates from high school at the pinnacle of the Soviet realization that their way of life must change....but they did not have the resources/gumption to do this.  A man named Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev, the General Secretary of the CPSU and leader of the Soviet Union, was causing some ripples in the political fabric of the Soviet Union with his programs of "Perestroika, Glasnost, and Demokratizatisia".  These programs were a start, but they only scratched the surface of what the SU really needed to join the modern world.  For a young person, the choice of living like their parents during this era probably seemed exceptionally bleak.  Little Vera rebels.  She runs wild in the streets, is disrespectful to her parents, has no ambitions with the exception of snaring a man while she was still young.  There is a lot of violence, alcohol abuse, trauma, drama, and family disfunction in this film.  This is one of the first Soviet films that the rest of the world could tolerate with the added bonus of seeing the true Soviet lifestyle in the 1980's.

This film garnered a total of 6 international awards. Nataly Negoda, the lead character, received "Best Actress" at the Nika Awards in 1989. Vasili Pichul, the director, won the Special Jury Prize at the 1988 Montreal World Film Festival.

Culture

Well, you see exactly how the majority of Soviets lived at that time.  The apartments were tiny, crowded, and shabby.  The adults were apathetic and unhappy.  The relationships between the parents and children were volatile.  As all teens, Vera just wanted to escape the world that she knew to somewhere else that she could call her own.  The movie showed a lot of the broken-down machinery, factories, and buildings that are common in Soviet cities.  People did not have a lot of personal things and relationships were the most important to them.  It is a true picture of how life was in the Soviet Union at that time.

Bottom of Form