Give Foreign Films a Chance

I'm going under the assumption that a large portion of reddit users are ether American or from the UK. To those who mainly (if not only) watch English speaking films, if one finds issue in the lack of diversity and variety in story telling, I always advice it's healthy to reassess one's own film watching habits, and to include more varied stories, told by other kinds of people. What I mean is To watch a film is your own decision - it is you who is making the choice if you want to see an American film, or a Saudi Arabian one; it is you who is making the choice to watch a film where the lead is male, or where the lead is female; it is you who is making the choice if today you want to see something written by the typical Hollywoodian screenwriter, or someone who has important LGBT stories to tell. So we have the ultimate control and responsibility in regards to what is being shown on our own screen.Many people today conflate the term 'cinema' with the big industries like Hollywood. They see the Academy Awards as representative of the whole cinema of the world, and so they form their opinion on cinema according to what they see represented in those specific industries and institutions. Those industries want you to do that, they want to have the monopoly of the art form, but that causes many blind spots for the individual watcher. So when people say, that cinema has been neglecting the voices of the underrepresented demographics, what they really mean is that the particular cinema that they have been watching, has been neglectful. And that is not the same.Direct your critique at specific studios, their directors, and their screenwriters for being to cliched, or telling the same stories over or over again, for not being diverse enough. But when a person says that they've lost faith in cinema as a whole, that tells me more about the watcher and the places they look for films, more than anything else. World cinema is unimaginably diverse, with many unique films waiting to be discovered, and many stories to be experienced. A dozen lifetimes wouldn't be enough to watch it all. You just need to take more responsibility, and not let the studios dictate which films you should spend your time on.If you like some recommendations I'd love to help. I'm a film historian who has collected a wide range a films from around the world, though be more specific on which, country, language, culture and genre your looking for. via /r/movies https://ift.tt/3jGO1rF