This was a great subject. I did this instead of Russian 6 to finish my Russian Studies minor and am really glad I did. You look at 11 films over the course across 60ish years of Soviet and Russian cinema - "Летят журавли" (1957), "Морозко" (1964), "Бриллиантовая рука" (1968), "Иван Васильевич меняет профессию" (1973), "Зеркало" (1974), "Москва слезам не верит" (1979), "Курьер" (1986), "Утомлённые солнцем" (1994), "Сёстры" (2001), "Елена" (2011), and "Гагарин: Первый в космосе" (2013). The list of films may change in future versions of this subject. The range of film genres was also quite broad - ranging from Gaidai's classic soviet comedies to early 2000s crime dramas to the philosophical works of Tarkovsky. Each week consists of a film session where you watch the film (in Russian with English subtitles) and maybe discuss it for 5-10 minutes, followed by a 2-hour seminar where you go into the film in detail. The seminars often include a breakdown of the historical/cultural context for the film, key themes or characters, idioms or phrases that have come from the film into the Russian language, and grammatical exercises based around the film. As much as possible the discussion is in Russian, but Natasha is very flexible and switches to English when needed. I was definitely exposed to a lot more spoken Russian doing this subject than Russian 5 or 6 though. Although the Handbook entry says this subject requires about a C1 level of Russian, in reality everyone in my class was about a B1, so you'll be fine as long as you've done at least Russian 4. This subject was definitely the best Russian subject I did, both in terms of the amount of Russian I learned and the amount I learned about Russian culture. Learning vocabulary and grammar *in context*, as opposed to through a textbook, was really interesting. Furthermore, actually seeing depictions of Russia on screen really emphasised the cultural differences between Russia and the West in a way that is difficult to describe. I would highly, highly recommend this subject to anyone interested in Russia or Russian, and especially to people doing a Russian Studies major/minor. Can't overstate how much I enjoyed this subject.

Anonymous, Semester 2, 2022