Participants of "Friends, Our Union is Wonderful" Festival gather online
29.10.2020
The Youth Forum “Youth in the Age of Digital Communications” is being held within the framework of the 14th Assembly organized by the Russkiy Mir Foundation. The first event of the forum was the online school for a young journalist, the day before there was a presentation of books, teaching aids and programs for learning the Russian language.
On October 29, the participants of the "Friends, Our Union is Wonderful" Festival held a special meeting. For several years, the festival has been been gathering young Russian language specialists under the auspices of the Russkiy Mir Foundation. The forum has been traditionally held in Bulgaria but this year it was canceled due to the pandemic. That is why the participants of the previous years decided to gather online.
The presenters of the meeting, the director of theater and cinema Alexei Sviridov and the chief editor of the Russkiy Mir TV and radio company Yevgeny Fakhurtdinova invited the participants to recall the significant events of the year; discuss what pros and cons can be found in isolation during the coronavirus; talked about the work on teaching the Russian language, which, despite the pandemic, did not stop in Russian centers around the world.
Students shared their views on why it was worth learning Russian and how to do it creatively; remembered the previous meetings at the festival, took part in a fun quiz; learned about digital etiquette (netiquette), as well as how to properly and successfully maintain their pages on social networks. Video greetings from Russia and Turkey, Greece and Bulgaria, China and Vietnam, Uzbekistan and many other countries were shown online. The students who recorded their videos spoke Russian with a variety of accents, but always remained positive, recited poetry and even sang songs in Russian.
During the meeting, the winners of the competition for the best video were announced, in which the children told why and how they learn Russian. More than 40 works from Hungary, Greece, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Serbia, USA, Russia, China were sent to the competition.
The third place was taken by a video of students from Hungary, from the Institute of Slavic Studies at the University of Debrecen. The video of the Colombian student Salgado Paz Steven from the Pacific State University from Khabarovsk took second place. The winner was the work of students of the Institute of Russian Language of the Beijing University of Foreign Languages Liu Hongbo, Xu Haiyue and Liu Chunyu.
Italian entrepreneur Marco Maggi's book, "Russian to the Bone," is now accessible for purchase in Italy and is scheduled for release in Russia in the upcoming months. In the book, Marco recounts his personal odyssey, narrating each stage of his life as a foreigner in Russia—starting from the initial fascination to the process of cultural assimilation, venturing into business, fostering authentic friendships, and ultimately, reaching a deep sense of identifying as a Russian at his very core.
Mikhail Kalatozov, a director who transformed the world of cinematography in many ways, was born 120 years ago. He was a Soviet film official and a propagandist. Above all, he was capable of producing movies that struck viewers with their power and poetic language.
