Does anyone out there know of any good Russian films? I am trying to learn this beautiful language, and I understand that emersion with multiple forms of media is very helpful. спасибо заранее
Броненосец «Потёмкин» is something I had to watch in my film history class two semesters ago. by the way...Вы говорите по-русски также?
12, it's a modern film about a boy on trial for murder and touches on racism in Russia, definitely one of my favorite movies.
I took Russian film classes at both my college and while studying in Moscow....my favorite Soviet film was not actually produced in Russia itself but in the Soviet republic of Georgia, and dubbed into Russian... Покаяние (Repentance) is done in the surrealist style, produced in 1984 but not released until 1987 under Gorbachov's glasnost. Very powerful commentary on power, based loosely on Stalinism but also more generally on other dictatorships, a lot of symbolism: If you're looking for something more lighthearted, Цирк (Circus) is a 1936 musical comedy starring Lyubov Orlova. At the end all the peoples of the Soviet Union sing of how happy they are together, the whole thing is quite campy. Чапаев (Chapaev) is a 1934 action film about a hero of the Russian civil war, although it plays somewhat loose with the facts about that hero. Летят журавли (The Cranes Are Flying) is a 1957 tragic wartime romance, inspired partly by Italian neorealism, but with a definite Russian feel. Ирония судьбы, или С лёгким паром! (The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath) is a 1976 Soviet romantic comedy typically watched by Russians as a tradition on New Years', and one of my favorite Russian films despite it's silly premise. I have to mention Москва слезам не верит (Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears), the 1980 romantic classic about young Soviet women growing up in Moscow. Not my personal favorite, but it won an Oscar for best foreign film! If you're looking for something more modern, there is Ночной дозор (Nightwatch), a 2004 thriller film about vampires in modern Moscow (also followed by Daywatch). There's also Олигарх (Oligarch, but translated into English with the title "Tycoon: A New Russian"), a 2002 film about wealthy oligarchs in the criminal underworld of post-Soviet Russia.
Just out of curiosity...do you speak Russian fluently? If yes, is it hard as they say it is? (I would like to learn it)
Uh, well I wouldn't claim to speak Russian fluently, especially not now after a full year of doing absolutely nothing to maintain it. :/ However I don't think it is really all that difficult, beneath the different alphabet it's basically just another European language with a lot of cognate words; definitely easier than say Arabic or Chinese. You can see Latin cognates in Russian words like видеть (videt', to see, compare to Latin videre (to see), from where we get English video) and верить (verit', to believe, compare to Latin veritas (truth), from where get English words like verify). There are also lots of simple old Greek words like философия (filosophia, philosophy) and психология (psychologia, psychology), and филология (filologia, philology). In terms of grammatical structure, I think having knowledge of Latin and Ancient Greek also helped me with Russian, because it is an inflected language which still uses a full case system with different endings- unlike how modern Romance languages have largely dropped Latin's case system. Russian verbs also conjugate more like Latin or Greek verbs than like English. I like the sense of grammatical, almost mathematical precision you get from a language like this, with each word having an assigned role, unlike English which depends too much on word order.
Cool! Thank you . The thing is, my grandparents are Polish and I am going to learn Polish from them (I have the Polish of a 4 year old). Then I want to use Polish to learn Russian (hopefully another Slavic language will help). I already know doma=doma hahah
Also, Bondarchuk's 1967 Production of Tolstoy's "War and Peace" is pure gold. ---------- Post added 17th Jul 2013 at 11:05 PM ---------- They're not that similar. Like at all. Ukrainian is much closer to Russian, while retaining strong influences from Polish.
