For Your Consideration... Filmmaking Nations

As part of this blog, not only do I want to include movies of critical acclaim and international merit, but I also want to mention some others just for fun, as well as just provide some general information on film around the world. In between my main blog posts with film titles and their corresponding countries, there will be two other types of posts... For Your Consideration (which you are reading now) and the shorter post, If You Like --- , You Will Love... 

As I've started watching a lot of these movies, I've realized that I have a pretty big list of films coming from France, Germany, and India that I've really enjoyed, which makes it really tough to pick one film to represent an entire country. But a lot of the reason for this is that these countries have some of the biggest film industries out there. I was surprised to learn that not only India's Bollywood is the largest producer of films worldwide, but in 2009, Nigeria became the second largest film-producing country, beating Hollywood for that second spot. Films from Nigeria are part of the Nollywood film industry, the largest in Africa. And then halfway across the world, South Korea is large film producer as well, although many of their films have an easier time flourishing since there are quotas in place to keep too many foreign films from flooding in. And on top of that, Hong Kong is one of the world's largest film exporters, just below the United States. It seems like so far, the majority of nations have a film industry in place... it's just a matter of the types and sizes of audiences they can reach to be recognized world-wide.

Film is not only a great medium for telling a story, but it also allows a country to forge a national identity and build community amongst its people. When you watch movies from a different nation or time period, pay attention to the differences from the movies you are used to seeing. If you watch a film about World War II that was produced in the United States, it will most likely be very different from one produced in Germany due to historical and national sentiments. But one of the biggest differences across film borders is humor... what someone finds funny in Italy might not be funny in South Africa. With the next post, we'll try and put that claim to the test...