On April, 11th Saratov American Corner opened the Festival of Greatest American Films.

Watching the best American movies of all time, the participants of the project will be able to use them as a prism into the beliefs, values, cultural stereotypes, prejudices, and aspirations of the American nation. Masterpieces of America’s rich cinematic tradition will directly and vividly present an American perspective on all aspects of life, and they will do so in a way that will penetrate the consciousness of the audience far more effectively than most things the project participants may read or hear about American lifestyles and values in their everyday life.

The program of the Festival includes the following films:

Citizen Kane (1941)
Some Like It Hot (1959)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
No Country for Old Men (2007)
Amadeus (1984)
Sound of Music (1965)
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Inception (2010)
The English Patient (1996)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Blade Runner (1982)
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Toy Story (2010)

Each film is followed by a contest that aims to check your understanding of the film and let you express the thoughts in provoked in you. The rules and tasks for each contest are available online at http://vkontakte.ru/club5790227.

The perception of the magic of the best American movies of all times would be incomplete without their soundtracks. Not only do stirring musical accompaniments, orchestrated and sung, ensure a more enjoyable experience, they set the tone for a movie, parallel the lives of movie characters, enhance and compliment movie scenes and set the viewers up to understand the movie better.

English Song Festival “The Sounds of Film Music”, which will be held as part of the project, will feature the festival participants’ renditions of famous American movie soundtracks. The song festival will bring motion picture soundtracks to the forefront of the project participants’ attention and help them understand how important and significant an element of the film-making process they are.