Multimedia Monday: Cannes Winners

The topic for this week in my advanced classes is the Cannes Film Festival. Naturally, I went to town as far as watching stuff in class goes!

It's a Russian short that won some award or other at Cannes (in 1993, I think). And even though it's Russian, there's almost no dialogue so it's perfect even for extremely low level speakers. This one was really popular all around, and I don't really get tired of watching it. Because it's a short (just three and a half minutes long), it's nice to use either for a proper speaking activity or just as "brain break" in a longer class. 

This one is much more serious, and to be honest I find it a bit depressing. Again, though, no dialogue, and it also seemed to capture everyone's attention, even my more apathetic students. Always audible gasps of confusion when she starts cutting her hair. Maybe not so good as a "brain break" though, considering the gravity of the material.

I only showed about three minutes of this one in class (the whole scene is about twenty minutes long, I don't have that kind of time). I figured it would go over like a lead balloon, but I got a surprising mix of reactions. My youngest advanced class, who are super enthusiastic and love everything, thought it was hilarious. The girls in my oldest intermediate class were all rather nonplussed by it. Other classes' reactions fell somewhere on a spectrum between the two. The youngest advanced class was at first overwhelmed by the English introduction ("Teacher! I can't understand!") but fortunately Gilliam is a brilliant director and his surreal little story about an insurance company mutiny is easy to understand even if your English isn't that great. The first five minutes, at least. Of course, Korean students probably don't have the pop culture background to pick up on the genre reference to old-timey pirate and seafaring adventure movies, but that's not really necessary to enjoy watching a bunch of old guys beat up their young, heartless overlords.

If you need it, here's the YouTube DownloaderHD program, and if you need inspiration, here's my collection of Multimedia Monday posts.