Media from Around the World - 2015

[livingdeb]

I've made some real progress in experiencing media from around the world this year. Not counting little articles and video clips from my Spanish class and Facebook, it looks like I've experienced media from 22 of the 203 countries on my list. This is better than I expected. I expected to "visit" maybe five or ten countries. And it's not just fun or silly stuff, nor is it just very serious stuff. And it's not just easy countries, either.

Below is a brief summary. I'll write more about what I liked and what I learned about each part of the world in separate posts later.

Africa
Congo, Democratic Republic of (previously Belgian) - two nonfiction books, one fiction book (that I can remember--I feel like I read more than that)
Congo, Republic of (previously French) - one fiction book

The Americas
Argentina - two movies
Brazil - two fiction books
Chile - one fiction book
Colombia - one fiction book
Mexico - one fiction book, one nonfiction book, two movies
Peru - one fiction book

Asia and Oceana
Australia - a movie and a TV show
Bhutan - four nonfiction books, four fiction books, one movie
China - one fiction book
India - one movie
Japan - one documentary
Korea, South - one movie
Russia - one children's fiction book
Thailand - two fiction books (in a series)
Turkey - one fiction book (also set partly in Lebanon and Syria)

Europe
France - two fiction books and one TV show
Norway - one fiction book
Scotland - one fiction book
Spain - one children's nonfiction book, two movies
Sweden - five fiction books (in a series)

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Wow! Now that sounds like a fun challenge! You've already crossed Chile off your list, but that reminds me that CatMan and I read 3-4 books by Isabel Ayende and we just loved her! They were significantly more difficult than Harry Potter of Corazon Salvaje though, so you might want to wait a while before tackling them in Spanish, but she's a wonderful author!

Trying to think of anything else... CatMan's been trying to get me to watch a bunch of movies on martial arts "IP Man" and something else. I'm not a big fan of martial arts so I haven't made myself watch them yet but he says they're wonderful. I did watch Frida recently... does that count?

The other one that's been on my list forever is to watch the Seven Samuri. I think it's a looooong movie though, so it might be a while!

Are you gonna continue this one into the new year? It sounds like fun!
:-)
Cat

[livingdeb.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say I've crossed Chile off my list with only one book. What was your favorite Allande/Ayende book, or do you remember?

Never heard of Ip Man until just now--nonfiction? I've seen lots of movies from Hong Kong, but they have all been fiction.

Robin has just found a trailer for Ip Man 3. It looks very action-y. Robin says they found people who really look like Yip and Bruce Li. So maybe I will be watching one or more of these.

Now, the Seven Samurai I can definitely recommend. It's a good underdog story. Give yourself an intermission if you want to (I vaguely recall that Kurasawa sometimes adds intermissions to his movies!).

There's also a (probably shorter) American re-make, "The Magnificent Seven," which I vaguely recall also liking. The re-make is a western.

And yes, I will continue this into the new year. I didn't want to cram everything into one year and I do want to give myself the freedom to explore for a while (and read a bunch of books from the same country or by the same author).

[(Anonymous)]

OK so Isabel Allende books. Apparently I misspelled her name, though I'm totally giggling about how I misspelled it. I think I've learned to misspell in Spanish, if that makes any sense!

So we read a total of three books by her and I Loved them all. Daughter of Fortune (Hija de la Fortuna) and Portrait in Sepia (Retrato en Sepia) are a story and sequel - which we didn't realize at first so we read them in the wrong order, but they were delightful anyhow. The first book is set in the mid-1800's. It's about a young woman (with a mysterious past) from Chile who follows her lover to San Francisco during the gold rush. I don't want to give anything away, but there's a major character who is Chinese so there's lots about China in that book too. Retrato en Sepia takes up later, and it's about the Granddaughter of the woman in the first story, who subsequently ends up back in Chile. I loved them both and would happily re-read them.

The other book we read was Maya's Notebook (El Cuaderno de Maya) which is about a young woman from San Francisco who ends up in trouble with the law and... well, I don't want to spoil it for you, but there's a lot about an obscure region of Chile in the book.

Anyhow, the books were wonderful in Spanish, and full of humor as well as amazing characters. They took us a good long while to read in Spanish so depending on how much of a challenge you're up for you could read them either way. Isabel Allende is bi-lingual, so I'm sure she does her own translations, so you don't have to worry about something getting lost.

I'd LOVE to read more of her books, but CatMan is on a mystery kick, and we're currently slogging our way through a complicated tome set in Barcelona, that is full of bizarre stuff from the Spanish Inquisition and vocabulary that's actually Catalan and not Spanish... let's just say I'd rather be reading more Isabel Allende!

[livingdeb.livejournal.com]

Ooh, thanks for the Allende recommendations. I'll be sure to check out at least one of them.

Good luck with your obscure Catalan vocabulary!