International Cinema : Traveling Around the World - any movie recommendations?

Traveling Around the World - any movie recommendations?

On the 13th of july I'm setting out on a big adventure; I am gonna travel around the world! I can barely wait for that date to come, so to make the time go a little faster, I want to watch movies from the areas I'm traveling to.

My starting point is Norway, and these are the countries I will visit:

AMERICA:
Cuba
Peru
Bolivia
Argentina
Brazil

AFRICA:
South-Africa
Botswana
Zambia
Zimbabwe
Malawi
Mosambique

ASIA:
Singapore
Malaysia
Thailand
Cambodia
(Laos)
(Vietnam)

So.. Can you recommend movies from any of these areas/countries? Any films about traveling around the world? About backpacking? Only fiction please, not documentaries :)

THANK YOU!

Re: Traveling Around the World - any movie recommendations?

I think it will be hard to find films made by these countries, apart from Thailand. I have a few films though for some of the asian countries you mentioned but are not all about traveling.

Thailand:

Citizen Dog http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn47ifAAOVw

Syndromes and a Century http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnIXg6-8lic

Tears of The Black Tiger http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saTKuN5bc68

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bJdvNS4iRw

Singapore:

4:30 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbJC8hnxSFA

15 (this is a semi-documentary film)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OACAhT28-o0&feature=relmfu

Malaysia:

I Dont Want To Sleep Alone http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Azu197bM2Zk



My foreign film list http://www.imdb.com/list/z86jRjauDwE/

Re: Traveling Around the World - any movie recommendations?

Dear Liv. You must be aware that I may have a taste that is quite different from yours. Anyway:


"Anita" by Marcos Carnevale (Argentina, 2009)
[Anita suffers from Down syndrome and is so fat that it is impossible to detect her age. Anything between 10 and 14. She is also mentally retarded. A bomb explodes in the neighbourhood, and her mother who was just going to fetch her pension dies (though we are not told about that until near the end of the movie). Anita starts an Odyssey through the town. – I have seen two very different versions, one of them at the Jewish Film Festival in Stockholm, and one as a DVD I bought from Taiwan. In the "Jewish" version people who cannot fail to be involved with this girl have two opposite attitudes: to get rid of her, and to take genuine responsibility for her as long as they have, well, should we call it, their moral obligation. It is at least to some degree a "feel-good-movie".
- - In the Taiwan edition hardly anyone takes any responsibility. But it is more realistic. Anita cannot undress herself when she wants a bath. When she is with the photographer, he will have to do this. There is nothing indecent. He is sitting is the bathroom during her bath. In the "Jewish" version he tries to concentrate on some journals (on photography, I guess) while Anita talks her "rhyme": "Washing one arm, washing the other arm" etc. In the Taiwan edition it seems that he is smoking some narcotics.]


"Dezesseis zero sessenta" (16060) by Vinicius Mainardi (Brazilia, 1995)
[Hope I got the number right. On his 44th birthday he had lived so many days. But that it not important for the movie. A thief breaks into the house of the almost 44-year-old man, but is caught and sent in prison, and the man buys a gun to protect himself in the future. - But it would destroy some of the pleasure to tell the plot in advance.]


"Peeking Opera Blues" by Tsui Hark (Hong Kong, 1986)


"Mee Pok Man" by Eric Khoo (Singapore, 1995)
[Actually this is the movie from any other Asian country than Japan, which I love most. I have commented on it numerous times on these boards. A young man has a fish restaurant, where the prostitutes will often gather before the start their job. He is secretly in love with one of them, Bunny. One night Bunny is knocked down just outside this restaurant. [SORRY, HERE I HAVE FORGOTTEN A FEW VERY IMPORTANT WORDS. BUNNY HAD BEEN KNOCKED DOWN BY A CAR. AND THIS IS THE REASON WHY THE GANGSTER SYNDICATE COULD NEVER HAVE GUESSED THAT SHE HAD ANY RELATION TO THE MEE POK RESTAURANT.] The boy takes her to his home, and she might well have recovered through his loving care. To Bunny it is also an entirely new experience that a man could be interested in her for more than one reason.
- - The gangster syndicate who "owns" Bunny searches for her everywhere and beats up some of her foreign customers. They eventually come to the boy. And here I am obstinate against other users including professional experts, that the boy is no merely very shy. He is also mentally retarded. If he had not been so, he would have realised that the gangster syndicate had no reason to suspect this boy. There was no reason for him to shout 12-letter-words at them. The result is that they beat up him extra much. So when he comes home he is in such a condition that he needs consolation - and he does sleep with Bunny for the first time. This coitus is shown in a grandiose way that has only once been superseded, viz. in "Phaedra" by Jules Dassin.
- - But Bunny was still too injured, and she dies during the act.
- - The boy keeps her body in his apartment, places it at the table and puts food before the corpse whenever he is eating. In the last scene he is decently fondling her putrefied corpse and saying, "Others loved you when you were beauty but I still love you."
- - There is evidently disagreement whether the boy was mentally retarded or not, so at present you can find no plot summary at IMDb. Hence, this movie is not given a fair chance. I would say that even the worst plot summary would be better than none at all.]


"Terra sonambula" (Sleep Walking Land) by Teresa Prata (Mocambique/ Portugal, 2007)
[Once more I have seen two different versions, one of them at the African Film Festival in Stockholm, the other is the one I bought on DVD. No, the difference is restricted to one sequence of scenes.
- - The civil war has not ended, but it is approaching its end. A large part of the movie is how a young boy and an old man try to survive. It would be misleading to call the movie surrealistic, because long sequences are natural, but together they are contradictory. For instance, on a ship gone aground a mother is waiting. She cannot leave this ship, because then her son would never be able to find her. – A young man finds her on the ship and promises to find her son. He does find the son, though he has been murdered together with the whole family including the mother – who, according to another sequence, was very far from the home.
- - In the festival edition the most poetic scene is when the buss in which the son and the old man had lived is swimming in the sea, with not much above the waterline. The boy is sitting at the roof and rowing with his arms. He is near the ship aground, and we clearly recognise this ship, not least because of the active light tower next to it, and we know that his mother is on this ship. But the boy does not know it and will not meet her.
- - This sequence is in my DVD substituted with another in which the buss is also swimming, but now the boy and the old man are sitting on the roof in full light and just talking. I don't think what they say is very interesting.]


"Life, Above All" by Oliver Schmitz (South African Union, 2009)
[adapted from Allan Stratton's short novel "Chanda's Secrets". Chanda's mother had married a man from a "wrong" tribe, and is therefore treated with contempt by her parents. When this man dies she marries another, who associates a lot with prostitutes and contamines the mother with aids. Her baby dies from aids after a few months, and her parents are convinced that the baby died because she had married a wrong man. – To conceal the shame the family hides away the sick mother far away in a secret place. But 12-year-old Chanda succeeds in finding her and bringing her home. She also takes care of a schoolmate suffering from aids, who had little choice except to make a living for her family by prostitution. Chanda is a wonderful girl and a wonderful actress.]


"Moolaadé" by Ousmane Sembene (Senegal/ Burkina Faso/ Morocco/ Tunisia/ Kamerun/ France, 2002)
[A movie on female circumcision that has been admired all over the world, though more in movie clubs and feminist associations than in theatres. Read the plot summary.]

Re: Traveling Around the World - any movie recommendations?

I have no travel or backpacking films,sorry,so just suggestions from some of the countries:

1)"I am Cuba"(Cuba)
2)"Lucia"(1968,Cuba)
3)"Azucar Amarga"(Cuba)
4)"Official Story"(Argentina)
5)"Man Facing Southeast"(Argentina)
6)"Pixote"(Brazil)
7)"City of God"(Brazil)
8)"Gods Must be Crazy"(South Africa & Botswana)
9)"Tsotsi"(South Africa)
10)"Last Life in the Universe"(Thailand)
11)"Scent of Green Papaya"(Vietnam)


"I'm sorry"
"Was that so difficult??"
"Yes,it was"
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