A first glance can tell a lot about a person. So is the case for UCLA professor of cinematographic arts, Marina Goldovskaya. Just one glimpse into this professor, director, cinematographer and writer’s office reveals wall-to-wall bookcases of video clips and books. These videos and books all lead to one truth: Goldovskaya’s passion for documentary filmmaking.
This is a passion that has been manifested in over 30 documentaries made over the course of 40 years for which she received an award for Scholarship and Preservation from the International Documentary Association last Friday.
Goldovskaya has been a full-time professor at UCLA since 1995 and credits the award from the International Documentary Association to her long tenured teaching in the film department.
“It is an award for lifetime scholarship and preservation. … I’m probably getting it because I am a Ph.D. and professor and have been teaching all my life.”
Goldovskaya has already amassed awards from a number of other countries but is particularly grateful this time around considering her relatively short residence in America.
“I have a lifetime award from the Russian Association of Film and a Japanese Lifetime Award for the participation in the development of high definition film,” she said. “(This award) was really special because I am here only 16 years.”
Goldovskaya grew up in Russia, where she first became interested in documentaries and journalism.
“I started in the middle of the ’60s after graduating from the department of cinematography at Moscow State Film Institute,” she said. “Later, I started working on documentaries and later still worked on my films. That’s what I am doing up till now.”
Aside from her documentary work, Goldovskaya returned to academia soon after graduation, but this time she went back to school to teach, rather than to learn.
“I started teaching at Moscow State University when I was 23 years old,” Goldovskaya said. “My students were older than I was and practically half of the Russian journalists were my students at one point because Moscow State University was the best university and best department for journalism.”
While Goldovskaya has covered a variety of different subjects in her long career as a documentarian, many of her documentaries have been based on the differing aspects of Russian life.
“I’m interested in understanding my own people and myself,” she said. “My goal is usually to express the life of Russia … life of the country, slice of the society, slice of life. It helps people understand how the country functioned.”
Goldovskaya’s most recent film, “Three Songs about Motherland,” stemmed from a proposal she received from the Russian Ministry of Culture.
The film is a three-part documentary in which Goldovskaya tries to show the transition of her native country from the old communist Russia to the new capitalism that’s stirring within the country.
“The first part is about a city of communist dreams of the ’30s. … The third part is about the city of future hope,” Goldovskaya said. “It is like a fairy tale. It is the center of new world industry. So it’s the new ideal of prosperity and happiness.”
Goldovskaya used the late Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya as the emotional center of the film and used her as a way to put a face and a name on the changes across the country.
“What I wanted to show was that between communism and capitalism there is this precipice where Anna Politkovskaya was killed. What is the price we pay for what we committed?”
“Three Songs about Motherland” recently screened at UCLA after having been screened across the globe.
“It is very controversial. People speak about the same thing from very different perspectives. You would think that it’s one people. One people. One. Then why are they so divided?” Goldovskaya said. “Because communism has never been accused.”
Other films that Goldovskaya is especially proud of include “The House on Arbat Street,” “The Shattered Mirror” and “Solovky Power,” all three of which have received awards. According to Goldovskaya, she loves “the unbreakable human spirit” seen in the people who survived the prison camps in Russia displayed in the film “Solovky Power.”
Beyond entertaining or educating the masses, Goldovskaya makes her films for herself.
“I don’t know my audience,” said Goldovskaya. “The audience is different every time. I make a film that is important to me because I want to express some ideas that are important to me.
“Most of the time, what is important to you is important to other people as well because we all breathe the same air and we are all products of the same society.”