About Marina Goldovskaya and Lesson Overview
Lesson 1: The Director and the Films
This lesson features an interview with Marina Goldovskaya, one of Russia’s most prominent documentary filmmakers and a professor of documentary film at the University of California at Los Angeles. The lesson introduces the filmmaker and her filmography, as well as the historical context of her films. Students working through this lesson focus on word formation and intonation patterns.
This lesson can be assigned on its own, or before students begin work on the series of lessons based on Goldovksaya’s films Solovky Power or Children of Ivan Kuzmich.
Authors: Shannon Donnally Quinn, with Victoria Thorstensson, Benjamin Rifkin, Dianna Murphy
New version created by: Shannon Donnally Quinn and Isabella Palange with help from Lidia Gault
Власть соловецкая
This series lessons is based on excerpts from Marina Goldovskaya’s groundbreaking documentary film, Solovky Power. The film, which recounts the history of the opening of the Soviet Union’s first concentration camp, features interviews with several of the prisoners held at the camp, including internationally renowned scholar of medieval Russian culture Dmitrii Likhachev. Another interview subject is Aleksandr Prokhorov, whose grandson recounts for RAILS his experience growing up in a family setting in which one learned at an early age not to discuss grandpa’s biography.
This lesson features an excerpt from the film in which Dmitrii Likhachev describes his experiences at the Solovky prison camp. Students learn about the geography of Solovky and its place in the history of the Soviet Gulag. Students also read excerpts from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago in Russian and hear different opinions about Solovky today. Students also work with different verbal prefixes.
Authors: Shannon Donnally Quinn, with Victoria Thorstensson, Benjamin Rifkin, Dianna Murphy
New version created by: Shannon Donnally Quinn and Isabella Palange with help from Lidia Gault
This lesson features clips from interviews with other people who were imprisoned at Solovky. Students learn how and why they were arrested and what happened to some of them after they left Solovky. They will compare spoken and written discourse, work with diminutive forms and learn to distinguish different personal speaking styles. Recommended class activity: Prepare to discuss how and why each hero in this lesson was arrested and what was that hero’s subsequent fate.
Authors: Shannon Donnally Quinn, with Victoria Thorstensson, Benjamin Rifkin, Dianna Murphy
New version created by: Shannon Donnally Quinn and Isabella Palange with help from Lidia Gault
Lesson 4: Life in the Camp and After
This lesson features another clip from the film in which Dmitrii Likhachev talks about an execution that occurred at the Solovky camp. Students also learn about daily life in the camp and hear about torture practices. They read from and listen to excerpts from Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago and hear different opinions about how the camp affected prisoners and their families.
Authors: Shannon Donnally Quinn, with Victoria Thorstensson, Benjamin Rifkin, Dianna Murphy
New version created by: Shannon Donnally Quinn and Isabella Palange with help from Lidia Gault
Lesson 5: About the Film Solovky Power
This lesson consists of two clips from an interview with filmmaker Maria Goldovskaya in which she describes the making of the film. She discusses how she got the name of the film past the censors, how different groups of people reacted to the film, and about some of the effects of the film on Russian society. Students working through this lesson learn about filler words, false starts, pauses and cause-and-effect relationships in Russian.
Authors: Shannon Donnally Quinn, with Victoria Thorstensson, Benjamin Rifkin, Dianna Murphy
New version created by: Shannon Donnally Quinn and Isabella Palange with help from Lidia Gault
Дети Ивана Кузьмича
These lessons are based on excerpts from Marina Goldovskaya’s documentary film, The Children of Ivan Kuzmich. The film tells the story of a remarkable school principal, Ivan Kuzmich Novikov, who protected the children of his school from the political repressions that swept the Soviet Union during the 1930s. The film also tells the story of the remarkable children who attended the school, including Svetlana Bukharina.
Lesson 6: The Country and Stalinism
This lesson features an excerpt from the film that describes how Soviet society of the 1920s was transformed into a totalitarian state in the 1930s, about Lenin’s political testament, about the enthusiasm and achievements of the Soviet people of this time, and about communal apartments. In addition to learning cultural and historical background, students using this lesson learn to understand rhetorical questions in Russian.
Authors: Victoria Thorstensson, with Shannon Donnally Quinn, Benjamin Rifkin, Dianna Murphy
New version created by: Shannon Donnally Quinn and Isabella Palange with help from Lidia Gault
This lesson features an excerpt of the film describing the history of School No. 110 before and after the revolution, about its principal during the period of interest, and about some of the school’s students and parents. The lesson focuses on description.
Authors: Victoria Thorstensson, with Shannon Donnally Quinn, Benjamin Rifkin, Dianna Murphy
New version created by: Shannon Donnally Quinn and Isabella Palange with help from Lidia Gault
Lesson 8: Parents and Children
This lesson features an excerpt from the film in which students learn about school life in Russia in the 1930s and about how School No. 110 was different from other schools. Students also learn about some of the famous people whose children attended School No. 110.
Authors: Victoria Thorstensson, with Shannon Donnally Quinn, Benjamin Rifkin, Dianna Murphy
New version created by: Shannon Donnally Quinn and Isabella Palange with help from Lidia Gault
This lesson features an excerpt from the film in which students learn about how the Great Patriotic War changed the lives of all Soviet people and, especially, the lives of the students and teachers of School No. 110. Students learn about the different directions taken by the students of School No. 110 after the war. In so doing, they learn new vocabulary and practice using parenthetical phrases.
Authors: Victoria Thorstensson, with Shannon Donnally Quinn, Benjamin Rifkin, Dianna Murphy
New version created by: Shannon Donnally Quinn and Isabella Palange with help from Lidia Gault
Use of excerpts from the films Solovky Power and Children of Ivan Kuzmich in the RAILS lessons is courtesy of Goldfilms.
