Switching sides: defections at the Olympics.

The difficulty of life under the communist regime between 1945 and 1989 has been reflected in countless examples, the most striking one of them probably being related to the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. 

Look at Nadia Comaneci’s story and watch her performace in the Olympics. 

This year, 2016, a new edition of Olympics will take place in Rio de Janeiro. For this reason, we are going to take a closer look at the stories of those sportsmen who lived behind the “Iron Curtain” to learn about their thoughts, ideas, hopes and concerns. 

The proposal for this project is related to doing some further research on the countries you worked on before the Winter break. You will continue working on your groups and will have two basic tasks to complete:

1. Choose the story of ONE or TWO sportsmen who defected from their countries due to life under communism. Explain who they were, what they did and the circumstances under which they defected. You may present the info in the form of an interview or a poster.
2. Choose 3 exctracts from Gabriel G Màrquez’s book on your country that in your group’s view best portrays life in that country under the communist regime and illustrate it as a collage or a drawing. 

OR

3. Design a photo essay describing the most significant parts of the chapter, in your view, including music to accompany the images and extracts .

You will be able to work on this project in class on August 12th, the 19th and the 22nd. 

Project deadline: August 26th.