Peter my fellow volunteer and I started weekly Movie Club at Teacher Training College where young Malawians are studying to become primary school teachers in the rural areas.
Our intention was to provide different views through movies and documentaries to broaden their perspectives on global issues, various culture, art and so forth. We also wanted to have discussions after watching movies/documentaries to share our thoughts and learn from one another.
We thought this club would be a brilliant idea as we both love all kinds of movies (except for horrors for me!). But just as so many other projects I am working on in Malawi, things don't always turn out the way I expected.
Let me share three things that I found it very interesting and rather surprising.
When we showed "Last King of Scotland," we were expecting the students to say something about dictatorship, change in an individual from good to evil, role of women in society, or something about violence and world peace. All they talked about, interestingly enough, was the protagonist being "azungu" (white) and his good friend being African. "Why did only the white guy survive and the black doctor have to die?" I still remember this question being posed.
I guess "bed scenes" and "nudity" are big taboo in Malawian society from what I observed. Every time the students see someone having sex or taking off his/her clothes in movies, you hear this mouth clicking sounds from all over the place. It sort of made me feel like I was back in high school.
What amazed me the most was when Peter and I tried to show one of my favorite movies, “Spirited Away” a Japanese animation movie by Hayao Miyazaki. For movie lovers, this is such a great movie as it has gotten many awards worldwide. Guess what happened when we started showing this movie? - They started to LEAVE! One of our regular participants raised his hand and said, “Hmm… this is for little children. We adults don’t watch this type of movie. Can you show us something else?”
Having lived in Japan and US for most of my life, cartoon movies became a type of “art.” In US, for instance, there are cartoons made for adults like Simpsons and South Park. Before realizing that I was raising my voice, I found myself trying to persuade the students to watch Spirited Away by saying all kinds of things. A question that came out of my mouth, which I later thought was bit too much, was “Don’t you think that’s just like discrimination? You decide not to get to know someone with your assumption about who a person is because of his/her ethnicity, color of skin, or identity?” The students said nothing...
Well, in the end, we showed something else that day because the club wouldn’t serve its purpose without the audience. We started the following week with a presentation about “ways to watch movies” and mentioned briefly about cartoon movies being just another form of visuals/actors and actresses. I still want them to watch Spirited Away though, and I am sure I will but I thought was very intriguing response.
Anyways, I will write more about this club soon!
1 comment:
Hi!!! I'm in ur blog! It's really nice cause i get to know what u and peter r doing in daily basis. I would also like to have something like this but my cnoditions don't alow it.
About the Movie Club. Spirited Away! My whole body ached when I read they didn't wanna see it. By I can almost see it happening. here the "movie theaters" just show crappy karate or war movies. They are SO bad but they enjoy them like nothing else. i went to one of those shows one day just to see how it was, to live the experience. The worst thing of all is that I ENJOYED THE MOVIE hahahaha we r so disconected from the world that even the worst movie ever becomes fun! That's when u know u reached bottom!
But keep triying. that's why we r here. To die triying until u feel totalli useless hahaha but I'm sure u'll make an impression in at least one student. And then it will all be worth it. I guess.
Bye. I'll try to check ur blog as often as possible. That's to say once every other month.
Bye bye
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