I apologize for my absence. Work has taken up quite a bit of my time. I have noticed that my pages have been viewed by people from Germany and Russia. When I talk about foreign film, as I plan to in this post, please understand that I am speaking as an American film maker and thus please excuse me if I say anything offensive. If I do say something rude, it is through ignorance and not malice.

As I stated earlier, I am going to be talking about how an American film student, whether they be a scholar or actually working with cameras, should view international film. Filmmakers should learn from everything and anything, regardless of country of origin. Artists, everyone, is constantly learning and thus having broadened horizons will only make you that much more learned. Granted, we should always take it with a grain of salt. Country of origin does not guarantee quality, good or bad.

Any film school worth it's salt will give you at least a taste of foreign film, if nothing else but to whet your international appetite. I would encourage you to go out and find some for yourself. Often you can find gems that a conventional film school might overlook. Good examples of these are the Japanese "Casshern" and the Spanish "Pan's Labyrinth". Bollywood can be very fun to watch, if a bit melodramatic for my taste. Yasmin Amid's films are true wonders and I would suggest them to anyone with any serious interest in film.

The same goes for animation. Just because something is a cartoon does not mean that a filmmaker can learn nothing from it. Again, granted, your not going to learn a lot from watching "Dora the Explorer" all day. However, I feel that Japanese anime can teach a filmmaker about thinking outside the box. There are at least 3 series' about vampires that I have seen and they are all extremely different. With everyone saying all the narratives have been told, I find it refreshing to see that such is not true and that origional stories can and do get told.

I will go more into detail about my exaamples in later posts, but for now I leave wou with this bit of advice. Learn from everything.