Soviet Film and Television Subtitling Project. UCSC students with advanced Russian language skills have been subtitling Soviet animation and other films (including the important 1937 film A Stern Youth).
Mayakovsky’s children’s story “What is Good and What is Bad” has wonderful animation and provides an engaging view of the making of Soviet values.
To see more films, go to http://www.youtube.com/user/UCSantaCruzRussian
The project addresses a curricular need in allowing these students to continue their language study beyond the second year, and at the same time provides course materials for use in the first and second-year language classroom. The project thus allows student achievement to circulate back into the system, and gives students achievable goals with tangible benefit not only to our campus, but also to the “real world” beyond, as they post their work on Youtube. I am also planning a course working with students to develop ways of using this material as a means of access to Soviet cultural history (rather than for film scholarship per se).
