BY MICHELE KORT/UCLA Today

When American filmmakers release a documentary, the best they can hope for usually is a showing on PBS, a few awards, some coffeehouse and classroom discussion and perhaps a limited theatrical run. In Russia, however, film can create a national uproar, said Moscow-born visiting professor Marina Goldovskaya.

For example, her 1986 documentary about the first private farmer in Russia after the end of collective farming, "A Real Peasant from Archkangelsk," catapulted Goldovskaya to the forefront of Russian filmmakers when it was banned soon after it was first screened in Moscow.

"In Russia, films were always under intense scrutiny," Goldovskaya said. "Each film, each book, each play was censored by several people, because the government believed that a piece of art can open eyes, stir public opinion."

Described as "the leading Russian documentary filmmaker of her generation," Goldovskaya -- who has taught at the School of Theater, Film and Television for three years -- has won practically every prestigious honor for her work including the San Francisco International Film Festival's Golden Gate Award, the Grand Prix of FIPA in Cannes, Russia's top national award in media, the 1994 Prix Europa and the special jury Joris Ivens Award from the International Documentary Festival in Amsterdam.

By family tradition, Goldovskaya is connected to nearly the entire history of Soviet film. Her son, Sergei, a well-respected screenwriter, heads Russia's largest film studio. Her father, Evsej Goldovsky, was considered the father of Soviet film science, writing dozens of books, developing visual and sound systems, and founding the cinematography department at the famed Moscow Film Institute.

That's where Goldovskaya went to study, at age 16, drawn to cinematography as "a very romantic profession." It was considered a man's job, however, so her father tried to dissuade her. "The more he tried, the more I wanted it," she said.

That won't-take-no attitude has fueled all her work, whether as a cinematographer for Russia's biggest TV studio or filming her own documentaries. She's shot at the South Pole, nearly a mile down a mine shaft and in a weaving factory. Her documentaries have portrayed peasant life, revealed the truth about Soviet prison camps and, most recently, examined the sometimes painful post-perestroika world of her Moscow friends.

It's hard to believe that Goldovskaya was a card-carrying Communist, first as a believer and then to protect her job, especially being a Jew in an anti-Semitic society. After Soviet tanks crushed the nascent Czech democracy movement in 1968, however, she became a dissident. "We all hated this terrible regime," she says. "We knew it was all lies, but what could we do?" If she had protested too strenuously, she could have landed in prison or a mental hospital.

Instead, she scored points more subtly in her films. Now, she teaches students to find meaning in their work by telling the stories of real people. For Goldovskaya, film is an unquenchable obsession. "I've been making documentaries since 1970, and every time, I take the next film as seriously as my first," she said. "I'm not sure I can live without film."