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The Film Thread
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Hi everyone!
I thought, as we have a music thread that we should have a film thread also. I thought that perhaps we could put down TCK films or just films that we have enjoyed and perhaps add some quotes as well?
I’ll start: I just saw The Kite Runner. It is a film of two boys Amir and Hassan in Afghanistan prior to the Russian invasion of the 70s. Hassan is the son of the servants and a Hazara. The two grow up like brothers until Amir and his father flee to America.
Years later, he hears that Hassan is dead and thatHassan has asked him to go and collect his son from Afghanistan and to keep him safe.
Several points that i found interesting were:
- Amir is, essentially a TCK and i liked that he remarks upon returning to Afghanistan:
“I feel like a tourist in my own country.” To which his driver replies; “You always were, you just never realised it then.”
- The son answers in English in America to his father even though the father speaks to him in his native tongue.
- Only occasionally does Amir answer his father in his native tongue and it is slow in coming as if he has partially forgotten.
- The father at times speaks in English to Amir.
I liked how the film makers have done that — someone who is not bi-lingual or has never lived in a country where the language spoken there is not their native one does not understand the consequences of language loss or acquisition of their children.
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December 15th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
Oh Isa always has great ideas for threads! Here’s another TCK movie…
“Lost in Translation”
I haven’t watched it but someone suggested it, here’s the synopsis:
Bob Harris is an American film actor, far past his prime. He visits Tokyo to appear in commercials, and he meets Charlotte, the young wife of a visiting photographer. Bored and weary, Bob and Charlotte make ideal if improbable traveling companions. Charlotte is looking for “her place in life,” and Bob is tolerating a mediocre stateside marriage. Both separately and together, they live the experience of the American in Tokyo. Bob and Charlotte suffer both confusion and hilarity due to the cultural and language differences between themselves and the Japanese. As the relationship between Bob and Charlotte deepens, they come to the realization that their visits to Japan, and one another, must soon end.
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December 16th, 2007 at 5:14 am
Oh Thanks Brice! You always make my posts seem much cooler than they are!
Do you think i shld to an introduction post?
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December 20th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
How about “The Terminal”? That’s a TCKish movie!
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December 20th, 2007 at 7:48 pm
It is about a man trapped in the JFK International Airport Terminal when he is denied entry into the United States and at the same time cannot return to his native country due to a revolution.
Viktor speaks slightly accented literary Bulgarian language when he is represented to use his Krakozhian mother tongue. When Viktor first arrives at the airport he speaks little to no English; however, within the time frame of the film, he learns to speak English by immersion and picking up Russian and English versions of a New York City tour guide and comparing the wording. He also learns meanings by watching news programs at the airport.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminal
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December 21st, 2007 at 11:31 am
I love this movie
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December 24th, 2007 at 2:15 am
Isa! ooh yeah you should! Even Julie made one haha - we can then comment on your thread too, and I can give you a lolcat!
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January 1st, 2008 at 6:24 am
oh, I just loved this movie!
I mean, what could be better than having an airport as your home?!
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January 1st, 2008 at 9:21 am
Awesome movie… what about Memento?? Thats an awesome movie!..
its not terribly TCKish but speaks a lot about humans… The biggest message is about Lies but to go into it would give away the ending.. so… After you’ve watched it, we can discuss! haha
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January 1st, 2008 at 9:54 am
How about The Interpreter? Maybe someone else can post a link… it’s about a young woman who works as an interpreter for the UN. There’s intrigue, so I don’t want to give away too much of the plot, but she is a TCK and it’s a good movie.
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January 2nd, 2008 at 8:58 pm
I have seen this movie and I sort of didn’t get it…lol
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January 2nd, 2008 at 9:02 pm
I remember seeing the book in the library before but never read it.
I don’t think this is very TCKish but “The Joy Luck Club” was a great movie about “culture shock”. I never read the book though. The kids grew up to be very different from their parents, there was a culture clash between the generations.
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January 2nd, 2008 at 9:09 pm
That’s with Nicole Kidman right?
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January 20th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Ok my favourite films.
AI by Stephen Speelberg.
About the creation of a robot boy and his trying to fit into a human culture. Very much a TCK theme to this one.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0212720/
Empire of the Sun also by Stephen Speelberg.
About another TCK caught in the second world war in China. Another strong TCK theme to this one
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092965/
For some reason i got hooked on Pirates of Penzance.
Perhaps because the main character is trying to change his culture.
Paul T
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January 29th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
A new film in production by ThirdCat Productions.
On July 13th 2007, five students traveled to South Korea to document a life changing venture. “Going Home” will be a vehicle for exploration of the story of one transracial adoptee, his lifestyle and his journey to discover his birth parents. This endeavor is in affiliation with Emerson College as an entirely student-run Bachelor of Fine Arts Project.
From the website:
We learn a new love, a new laugh, and a new cry as we uncover ourselves with age. We might feel that this comes from our growth within- but we cannot deny that our surroundings and our culture plays a part.
A Third Culture Kid lifestyle embodies the adaptation of doubly dynamic surrounding cultures.
A Third Culture Kid grows up in an environment outside of their own parent’s native background. They discover the cultures they are exposed to, while not identifying with one in particular.
Their lifestyle touches upon facets of candid contradictions and interesting dichotomies. Similarly, transracial adoptees are exposed primarily to their adoptive parent’s culture and are unable to identify with their own genetic culture.
The documentary will explore the story of Jason Hoffmann, a transracial adoptee. Jason, an adoptee from South Korea, has been raised by a Jewish-American family in New York City’s Greenwich Village.
As a case study, Going Home will also explore the story of Mikyung Kim, an Adult Third Culture Kid. Although Mikyung is Korean, she was raised in Hong Kong where she attended a British elementary school, an American school, and finally college in Boston.
Going Home will put the spotlight on the social implications of discovering one’s own roots. Jason will immerse himself in the South Korean lifestyle and as he searches for his birth parents, we will see him journey into a new world physically, mentally, and emotionally.
For more check their site http://www.thirdcatproductions.com/
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July 27th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
For some strange reason Jason Hoffman reminds me of the actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt…
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July 29th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
To pick a mainstream movie, how about Mean Girls. Not a terribly good movie, but that’s a movie about a TCK trying to fit in, or rather at least the first 15min.
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July 29th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Yeah I heard Mean Girls was very TCK. Any other movies?
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July 30th, 2008 at 8:44 am
LOL the focus of mean girls is not reli TCK, more…on girls and their relationship with each other but um I thought tat movie was actually very insightful, definitely not just another teen movie. Very good.
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August 1st, 2008 at 9:36 am
“Seven Years in Tibet”
I’ve read the book too. It’s about a man living the tibetan culture just like a TCK would
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August 7th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Haha someone mentioned memento, and I’d immediately tie that to the TCK life b/c it’s a movie where every five minutes he forgets everything and has to figure out who he is, where he’s at, and what he’s doing. Hmmm, kinda like TCK life.
The movie Castaway really connected with me, on so many different levels, but the one scene that I remember the most is when he returns “home.” After the party he looks at all the leftover food and touches it slowly, recalling how he’d had to spear and catch his own food just a few weeks earlier.
Also, everyone’s best intentions to “bring him back to life.”
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August 7th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
The movie Garden State is a good one. Not moving from country to country. More about finding out how to define yourself within a world you may not entirely understand.
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August 7th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
What about “Nowhere in Africa” or “Nirgenwo in Africa”?
It is a german Film, but the movie is partially in German, English and Swahili. The movie is based on reality and focuses the struggles of a young german girl, who fled with her mother to Kenya during WW2, to find home in her parents culture and the one she lives in.
As the young girl matures she becomes more and more attached to Kenya. She learns Swahili from her the local children, English at a refugee school and continues to speak german with her family at home. Clearly she is an outsider in Kenya, but she is an outsider in Germany too and when her father tells her that the war is over and they are moving back home.. the girl responds by saying that Germany is not home.
The last scene is of the girl leaning out her window on the train going “home” grasping the dark hand of a native kenyan woman as the train slowly moves away. All she is left with is a banana and a warm smile as a gift.
This part makes me teary eyed every time.
Anyway I don’t have a clip, or quotes, but I found the movie really touching and would recommend it every one!
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August 23rd, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Garden State has a GREAT quote about “family.” It kind of relates to my understanding of “home,” as well, since that’s such an illusive word for us:
“You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn’t really your home anymore? All of the sudden even though you have some place where you can put your stuff that idea of home is gone…. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that’s all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.”
Sweet. Well said.
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November 18th, 2008 (3 days ago) at 3:35 pm
Three of my favorites are:
“Bend it like Beckham” (English/Indian CCK breaks cultural norms to become a female, pro footballer)
and
“A Far Off Place” (American TCK in Africa entertains an American monocultural brat for the summer, and they get caught up in an ivory poaching ring)
and
“The Other Side of Heaven” (Mormon missionary kid on his first mission on an island in the South Pacific — I forget which one)
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November 18th, 2008 (3 days ago) at 6:31 pm
Oh, and also…
In television, the Babylon 5 series.
Although it is science fiction, it does a fantastic job of capturing the emotional reality of the close-knit family feeling that forms around a major international project, when people from many diverse cultures are thrown together and must learn to work together closely for several years, and then after those bonds are formed, everyone gets sent on to their next post. I cry at the realism of the goodbyes, every time I get to the end of the 110-episode story. (And yes, it is a single, integrated story arc from first to last episode.)
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