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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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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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