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ABOUT

THE GOAL:

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Making world cinema approachable to an English speaking audience through a comprehensive guide of 21st-century films

This ongoing project aims to provide American film lovers with an accessible, introductory guide to international film. American audiences are notoriously difficult to break into for non-American directors. One of the biggest deterrents of watching non-English films for Americans has reportedly been the necessity of subtitles. 

 

The most common justification is that reading subtitles take away from the movie - who wants to spend the entirety of the film reading tiny captions at the bottom to figure out what these characters on-screen are talking about? However, this ignores the fact that dialogue is just one of the methods of portraying a story on screen. 

 

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“You identify with a character from a completely different culture,” she explains. “You share their deepest thoughts and feelings. It creates a sense of intimacy with humanity, with the rest of the world, which I think is so important today. We realize in that moment that there’s only one of ‘us’ here. We are them, they are us.” 

 

- Vera Blasi

 

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This guide is comprised of films from the last decade from dozens of countries. One of the guide objectives is that after watching a few of the films from the respective genres, the viewer can go on and look for films of certain genres, directors, or countries that drew them in the most. This is just a stepping stone for film lovers to venture into the beautiful world of cinema on their own.

Foreign films teach you a new language, but it’s not the language you think. It’s the language of cinema.”

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- Vera Blasi

AN AMERICAN'S GUIDE TO FOREIGN FILM ©

Designed and curated by Nicole Klein
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