Cross Cultural Skills

How To Choose Movies To Watch And Improve Your Cross-Cultural Skills

by on 19 March, 2009

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Culture Movies

It is not always easy to find the right movies to watch to build your cross-cultural skills. It sometimes takes practice to:

  • Identify the films that work for you
  • Watch the movie with the right mindset and get something out of it

Here are some tips to help you:

  • Begin with popular movies about different cultures that you are familiar with – find an easy place to start.
  • You should also consider independent and foreign movies – look up the movies selected by the film festivals.
  • Slowly try to see more cultural insights when watching the movies – get curious.
  • Remember to keep it enjoyable.

A Score Card

Today I read a very interesting article on The Power of Movies by Ellen Summerfield, an intercultural film specialist.  The Power of Movies has a simple table showing the advantages and dangers of movies in helping us understand and learn about other cultures.

After watching a movie you can use this table to see whether it was useful or not in contributing to your cross-cultural experience.

If you find a movie has left you with negative messages, reinforced stereotypes you have, or presented a single viewpoint, be weary of taking its message to heart.

This table adds further insights for watching movies to pick up cross-cultural communication tips.  And it helps explain why some people get negative results from watching different movies.

Discuss The Cultural Differences

Make a special event of watching different movies.  Invite friends and open the discussion. This is very interesting movie guide:

There are some great questions here to discuss the movie with friends afterward and gain more cultural insights.

Identify Differences In Cultural Behaviors

If you are serious about learning cross-cultural communication, be sure to look at the Intercultural Film Database.   This database gives you specific explanations on movie scenes based on the recognized cultural behaviors.  It is a great tool for more advanced learning simply by watching movies.

There are many different movies to watch to develop your cross-cultural skills.  Choose a couple of movies mentioned in these resources and see what best fits you.   Once you find the right place to start, it is often easier to continue gaining cross-cultural insights by watching movies.

More on Culture Films:

  1. How To Choose Movies To Watch And Improve Your Cross-Cultural Skills
  2. Movies For Cultural Insights
  3. Movies To See Life Through A Different Lens
  4. Movies To Work Through Personal Barriers
  5. Movies Make It Easy To See The Differences
  6. Movies Take You Different Places
  7. Movies To Understand The History Behind Culture
  8. Movies To Build Empathy
  9. Movies For Different Perspectives
  10. Movies To Understand Cultural Differences
  11. Movies On Adapting To Different Cultures

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Tagged as: cross-cultural skills, culture movies, culturosity, intercultural film database, movie guide

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  • http://www.profesjonalne-pozycjonowanie.pl/pozycjonowanie-poznan/ Pozycjonowanie Poznan

    Very easy way to improve cross-cultural skills is to go to IMDB and find top 10-20 movies produced in one country and watch. Sure it might be hard to find them with subtitles but watching actual foreign movies will teach you a lot more about the culture than just watching an american movie about it.

    Pozycjonowanie Poznans last blog post..Baier Lewico

  • http://cindyking.biz Cindy

    Czerwona,

    I agree this can be a very easy way to improve your cross-cultural skills. Some people are not able to take this first step though. The foreign films are “too foreign”. They need a buffer zone. That’s where this little score card mentioned above comes in handy. Each person can evaluate his reactions to the movie and make better choices for the next movies.

    American movies are what they are, but they are easily available to many people. As you acquire more international skills, it becomes easier to watch American movies without negativity. Afterward it is a question of taste and availability, isn’t it?

  • HTML coder

    полезные ссылки…

    Culture Movies It is not always easy to find the right movies to watch to build your cross-cultural understands. This is good help.

  • lipy akhter

    it’s really easy to improve cross-cultural skills. thanks a lot. i m really appreciate with Cindy for finding cultural movies. some times i faced some problem to finding a good cultural movies coz i don’t know about the English culture ..i think it will help me a lot..
    thanks cindy

    Regards,
    Ravi Verma
    __________
    Mens Ties

  • http://cindyking.biz Cindy

    Let me know which movies you get a lot out of!

  • Carl

    @Cindy –
    I got to know about france from movies like Amelie. Although it is oriented around a person, the french individuals and their way of thoucgts got a good exposure from that. Also bring your attention towards “A good year”, it is about the difference of culture between French countrysides and the English cities. That really do help a lot.

  • http://cindyking.biz Cindy

    Thank you for the movies Carl! It’s true, I think there are quite a few French films that are good to watch to pick up the different way of thinking and approach to life. And you ca pick up the French definition of “culture” in some of them too.

    I would love to go back and add some more movies to these lists. It’ll take me more time than I have right now… I very bad at remembering the titles! So I need to go through a list to juggle my brain cells a bit.

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  • kapil

    nice post.

    Regards,
    kapil
    __________
    kapil

  • http://cindyking.biz Cindy

    Glad you liked it :)

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