Alexander Nevsky

I had a real nice experience today. I was back from a long morning walk (through the rain, naturally) and waiting for a professor to fetch me for an afternoon meeting - and for some reason the Internet was down - so I turned on the TV (which I've been avoiding, mainly because my brain is starting to hurt because there are no English language channels, and with the type of dubbing they do - you can still hear the English with the Russian spoken over the top of it - and the two languages are flowing together, unless it's South Park, which I can figure out anyway). Luckily, the classic early Russian film Alexander Nevsky was playing - and the thought of actually watching it while in Russia was just over the top for me. I own a copy of it with English subtitles, and I taught it a couple years ago in a Film & World War II class, so I'm pretty familiar with the story, so I could follow along. It really struck me, again, how influential the film is specifically, and how so many later directors, both in the US and overseas, completely ripped off the early Soviet masters. Anyway, I was standing on a bus with Anna Kholina, the professor from St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University, on the way to our afternoon meeting, and I was talking about the film, and what I liked about it and how I had used it in class. You could just see how happy the entire discussion was making her, and finally she said that she didn't know that people outside of Russia had even heard of the film let alone seen it. Again, Americans always talk about how no one likes us overseas, but it just doesn't take that much of an effort to make a great impression - simply showing an interest in a culture other than our own is an easy way to start.