The Institute jumped into the free webinar field at the beginning of this year.

It’s much simpler than I would have thought! We give people access to an audio or video. After listening/viewing, they can join an hour-long live chat, email questions and comments, or do nothing. I’ve led the online chat twice (with other Institute faculty doing the others) and I really enjoy how much we get to know each other through the improvisational conversation we create out of questions and comments.

The May webinar is on social therapy. The material is an audio interview a Brazilian psychologist conducted with me two years ago when I was in Brazil. (It’s in English.) I trace  some of the history of social therapy. I introduce my work as a post-doctoral student in Michael Cole’s laboratory at Rockefeller University in the late 1970s and my meeting Fred Newman and founding the East Side Institute. The interview presents some of the highlights of the next 40 years of engagement and conversations with radical and critical psychologists, social constructionists, humanists, Vygotskians, Marxists, activity theorists, and the narrative therapy movement. People who’ve listened to it really like it! (I’ll be listening to it before the chat!)

If you’re interested, the interview is available at http://eastsideinstitute.org/audio_files/LHolzman%20Ricardo%20Lana.WAV at your convenience.  I’ll be leading the instant chat on Friday, May 18, 12:00 PM EST. Contact Mary Fridley at mfridley@eastsideinstitute.org for webinar registration.

If you can’t make it, you can share questions and comments at webinar@eastsideinstitute.org.

I am happy to report that a new documentary film, Lev Vygotsky: One Man’s Legacy through his Life and Theory, is being released this month. The filmmaker is Valerie Lowe who, in addition to making films, is an adult educator, corporate consultant and staff trainer in British Columbia — and a completely lovely person. I got to know Val when she was just beginning this project a few years ago and have been following its development. 

I also got  pre-release glimpses of the film this past fall when Val showed segments at the ISCAR (International Society for Cultural Activity Research) conference in San Diego and the Performing the World 2008 (PTW’08) conference in New York City. The film uniquely combines the political-cultural history of Vygotsky’s life with illustrations of contemporary Vygotskian practices in several countries, and is comprised of interviews with Vygotsky family members Gita L. Vygodskaya and Elena Kravtzova, photographs, archival footage, and commentaries by contemporary Vygotksian scholars, Michael Cole, Lois Holzman, Vera John-Steiner, Alex Kozulin, Tamara Lifanova, Luciano Mecacci, and James Wertsch. You can view sections of the film at the website media page. (You can see about 5 seconds of me in one of them.)

It was a  privilege to have been included in “Lev Vygotsky” and, even more, to have been able to introduce Val and viewers to the some extraordinary Vygotskian practitioners.

Some colleagues and I are now planning a New York premiere of the film to take place in March or April. Watch for the announcement!