Global Culture

The Toronto International Film Festival announced a line-up of 352 films from 61 countries. While there are the mandatory celebrities promoting their big-budget films, such a number guarantees that there will be plenty of newcomers that travel to the festival with the same attitude of the migrant, trying to understand a new culture and figuring out how their cultural baggage (their movie) makes sense in this new place. They will have a very small opportunity to convey their message, but we are all hoping they succeed.

In the post jazz & macdonald’s I criticized an article by Professor Richard Pells that, although full of wonderful historical analysis, seemed to be politically charged and lost credibility. One of the statements from Professor Pells is that American media industry has learned to produce content for a very heterogeneous (culturaly diverse) audience, therefore is ability to produce content with world-wide appeal. I believe that one of the reasons the TIFF has raised as one of the top film festivals has to do with the exact same fact: the diversity of its audience provides a powerful filter for what will resonate across cultural contexts.

If during this or any other local film festival you come across a movie that conveys the inner workings of a foreign culture or the growing awareness of a global culture, please post a comment.