I always use Dances with Wolves for this purpose. The Costner character has to learn how to communicate with a different culture and in a different language. Through being open-minded, he moves from complete ignorance to integration, though not without problems along the way. By the end of the film he has become a different person - no longer John Dunbar but Dances with Wolves. The processes of cultural change are very clearly delineated. When he is faced with his fellow soldiers again, the differences between them are painfully clear, and he sides with his former enemy... Another film of interest is Heaven and Earth which follows a Vietnamese girl to the US, where she has cultural problems; the Joy Luck Club shows Chinese immigrants discovering freedom, while Wedding Banquet shows the crossing of sexual as well as cultural borders in the US for Taiwanese immigrants. And Stranger than Paradise 'is about a self-styled New York hipster (John Lurie of the Lounge Lizards) who is paid a suprise and quite unwelcome visit by his pretty sixteen-year-old Hungarian cousin. From initial hostility and indifference a strange affection grows between the two exiles.' A rather simple film whose main point is cultural problems and frictions is Mr Baseball - 'A fading baseball player is traded to a Japanese team and has trouble fitting into the society.' If you're not worried about high quality, this is very graphic in its presentation of changes in attitudes forced upon those who cross borders... Regards JD Kyoto on 01.11.28 1:07 PM, Carol Donelan at [log in to unmask] wrote: > A colleague of mine is looking for films with plots featuring cultural > transition(s), i.e. someone going to a foreign country, or someone coming > home, and in both cases having to make some cultural adjustments and/or > resisting changes. > > Any ideas? > > Thanks for your input. > > Carol Donelan > Media Studies Program > Carleton College > > ---- > To sign off Screen-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF Screen-L > in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask] > ---- Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu