TIME FOR FUN AND GAMES

I began doing video with students when I was still a student. Back then, in 1971, such a project was was expensive (and had to be shot on low-grade eight-millimeter film). By the mid-1980s, I was teaching in the Middlebury Summer School and introduced the student video to the Russian program. We did one scripted video per summer. The final productions ran from 20 to 30 minutes. Students and teachers shared parts. Students helped with camera and lighting, the famous Middlebury language pledge limited all production talk to Russian. The sample segment that follows comes from the summer of 1984: Ten days That Shook Middlebury. The plot involves a Russian invasion of the French Chateau, so the script was bilingual (Russian and French).

Десять дней, которые потрясли Мидлбери (1984)

Students also worked both on and off mike on the Middlebury Russian School’s radio show, Русский голос, broadcast twice a week on the campus radio station. I started the show in 1986. Joanna Robin continued work on the show in 1987.

The Middlebury Russian Radio program was an outgrowth of Радио Русский Дом, a radio program that I produced as a graduate student at the University of Michigan. See details plus a sample of the program’s radio soap opera.