Sunday, October 21, 2007

Chinese? French? Castellano?

I love film festivals. One of my favorite festivals is the Southeast Asian film festival in San Francisco because they always have at least one Bollywood film with great *cheesy* songs and dances. My friend Dieter's sister's best friend from high school (got that?) named Gena, has been living in Buenos Aires for a couple of years. We were put in touch with each other and so when Gena suggested we check out a documentary film festival, I jumped on the idea. The movie we saw was the life story of a woman during the Chinese revolution.

It turns out that the movie was in Chinese (naturally) with French subtitles (due to it's French film producer) and additional subtitles in Spanish underneath the first subtitles. Good Grief, I thought to myself! I ended up reading the French subtitles, and when possible, also the Spanish. Of course, sometimes, I couldn't even finish the French ones. I was hoping to recognize a few Chinese words, since I've been learning a few from listening to Julie talk to her children. They must not have talked about nai-nai (milk) or gong-gong (grandfather).... the only words I know.

Overall, the movie was about a very important experience which we should all know about. However 3 hours of watching a woman tell her story from her living room chair, while straining to read French wasn't quite what I had in mind. I think it would have been better as a book. For now, I'll stick to the Bollywood films.

1 comment:

Stephanie said...

Love it Nicola! Too funny.