Tag Archives: culture

Interesting Movie

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Last Thursday, I went to see “Aferim!”, a movie that was about Gypsies. Since I did not read the description, I thought the movie would be more of a documentary and was prepared for some dry movie. However, it was completely not what I expected…

One thing I learned from this movie was how possessive and sexual men were in the 1800s, especially those of Eastern European decent. While people today tend to marry whomever whenever they want, our culture has become less centered around family. However after watching the movie, I observed that marriage was taken more seriously and was considered a necessity for survival. In other words, conducting adultery or being unfaithful towards one’s mate was punishable by death. Especially for women, wives had to be obedient towards their husband. This movie made me realize how much our culture (or at least that of European heritage) has drastically changed over such a short period of time.

While foreign films tend to be more difficult to understand, this specific movie was pretty simple.When I first figured out that the movie would be in a foreign language and in Black/white, I thought that I will eventually drift off to sleep. However, because the story was not complex and had a smooth flow throughout, I found that I was able to stay engaged throughout the entire movie. I think this showed (at least to me) that life (at least from the perspective of the movie) in the 1800s was more simple and slower moving. While people did have hardships and conflicts, the average person’s lifestyle appeared to be more simple and thus less complex. In other words through this movie, I observed that while life on earth has become “advanced” through technology, it has also added numerous complexities. However, I know it is not good to judge form one movie and thus conclude that in this specific situation, people appeared to have simpler lives.

This movie therefore has given me a new understanding of how life has changed and evolved over time.

Free Movie

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Learning about how a movie theater works has been more fascinating than I thought. We learned about the tedious process of obtaining newly released films as well as how the actual movie was projected on the screen.  We were generously given free access to any movie by Rose house. Therefore I thought this event was definitely worth the time to come to Ithaca.

The first thing the movie theater manager talked about was the process of obtaining a newly released movie. Up to two years ago, Hollywood still used films which took a long time to travel across the country. This was quite interesting because as a person from Japan, newly released American or European movies took a year or two to make their way over to Japanese movie theaters. As you can imagine, that was quite frustrating for many people including myself.  However, over the years I noticed that this delay of new releases was getting shorter and shorter. According to the manager of the movie theater, movie theaters have stopped using film altogether due to the large size and limited supply and are now using large flash drives instead. This conversion has allowed movie theaters to easily get the new movie on time.

Like most people, I have been to movie theaters many times without knowing anything about what happened behind the scene. I just assumed that there was a man in a back room with stacks of film, managing the projector and everything else that had to do with the theater. However, I was wrong. When we went into the back room, there was a large box with a projector on top. This box was the computer that scheduled  and played the movies, controlled the lights, managed the room temperature, and everything else that is associated to  the theater. I found this extremely fascinating and realized how much computers have changed our world.

Visiting a movie theater was more interesting than I thought. Before visiting, I did not have high expectations and thought that there would not be much to see other than the theater itself. However, I found that a movie theater has many more parts to it other than showing the movie. I would definitely go again!

 

Rich culture

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Music has always been an important part of my life. As a child, I always felt inspired after a good concert or some musical event. It always gave me a sense of deep satisfaction and comfort. However for a great deal of my life good musical performances were hard to come by, for I lived in a poor small city in Japan where classical music was almost nonexistent. Unlike the United States where foreign music and art is fairly accessible throughout the country, Japan only has accessible foreign cultural events clustered around well-known large metropolitan areas like Tokyo and Kyoto-Osaka. Obscure cities like mine that are far from these major metropolitan centers are unable to afford most international musical ensembles and famous art exhibitions. The few that might come to a city like ours would usually be overpriced ( $300~) and would be mediocre performances.

When I moved back to the United States three years ago, I was shocked to see the richness and abundance of music as well as other cultural related events. After the Freiburg performance, I remembered how lucky I am to have access to such events that would be inaccessible to most people in Japan and other countries. Thank you to all who made this special event possible!