I’m convinced my Russian professor keeps some of these damn things around because they’re so hideously entertaining.
The best one we’ve watched so far is a Soviet-era movie featuring a guy who invents a robot and teaches it to speak Russian. The robot is basically a guy with coffee cans on his arms and legs and a box on his head. Late at night, the robot escapes and wanders around the city, looking for various landmarks. He stops complete strangers and asks them “What’s that?” The best part of the movie was the implicit Soviet propaganda. You kind of just had to see it, but, uh… example: it’s the middle of the night, and those dedicated Russian factory workers are still up doing their jobs! At one point it got so obvious that the entire class started laughing. It was quality, man.
My sister is learning Spanish, and her class is watching Mexican soap operas featuring some orange-blond girl who’s a pop singer with a stalker.
Although I don’t think it could top Robort the Robot.
Back in first-year classes, my teacher used to show us videos called “Jan-san and the Japanese People.” They were mostly dopey films about Jan, a Pakistani man who works in an architectural office. Most of the dialogue in the early films is on the level of “could you please mail this letter for me?” We skipped about a year’s worth of the films, and then I saw one of the later episodes. Jan develops a crush on one of the office ladies, and one night after work when everyone’s out drinking, the office workers poke fun at him because she’s secretly engaged to someone else and she’s been leading him on. He drinks until he can barely stand up, then storms off into the night, and gets into a fistfight at a dingy noodle stand. One of his coworkers happens by and tries to help him out, whereupon Jan rages at him for not having the decency to tell him the woman was engaged, and screams “is this how you treat foreigners?”
Now I’m dying to know what happened to Jan and the woman. I never saw any of the following episodes.
Ask any high school French student about “French in Action.” Thankfully, I never saw the final episode where the visiting American, clad only in his underwear, saves the French chick from a burning hotel. Or so I’ve been told.
I tried to care about Mirielle and her crappy family, really. I tried not to want to rip her bratty little sister apart. I tried to give a rat’s ass about what the professor was saying and I tried not to giggle at the students’ blatantly American accents. But I failed.
I have fond memories of “Zarabanda,” a VERY dated BBC soap opera meant to teach people Spanish.
It was about a guy named Ramiro, who wore a “camisa moderna” (i.e. paisley) and got involved with a lot of women, most of them with ironed hair. Later on, our hapless hero somehow got involved in a plot to kidnap a South American presidente, and things got very surreal indeed.
Oh, Dragonblink, you are just making me die of laughter… you are so right!!! I am French and was a tutor while in an American University, and they all had to learn from French in action with its 1970’s characters, and Mireille (who does not wear a bra if you noticed)… I made such a point to tell the American students that France and French were just NOT like that!
Ohhhh… I can’t stop laughing!!!
I understand they hated French class!
We watched an absolutely hilarious one in (Introductory) German class many years back. There was this couple, and everywhere they went, the guy kept saying, in a very suave voice, “Mein Name ist Bell.” Finally, he had to go into the drugstore and complain about his, um, digestive problems by admitting to the pharmacist, “Ich habe durchfall.” It was hilarious, but 15 years or so later I still remember the German word for diarrhea!
It was quality, man.