>Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1999 15:17:40 +0900 >From: John Dougill <[log in to unmask]> >Subject: Multiculturalism > >I'm putting together a course on multiculturalism for my students in >Japan - it's a subject of some importance in a closed society. I have >a fair number of ideas so far, as detailed below, but I'd like to >develop a historical perspective in Unit One about how things have >changed since the youth revolution in the 1960s for a more open, just >and equal society. Could anyone give a good suggestion for a film >which exemplifies the social shift in the 1960s to the new >multicultural attitudes? The inclusion of Secrets & Lies in your list made me wonder whether I had misread the specific emphasis of the rest. Are you looking for/at American "multiculturalism"? If not, it might be that examples from other cinemas would not spring from the same political sources -- "the" youth revolution, for example. In Australia there are a number of films dealing with the migrant experience and resulting cultural adjustments, which reference more directly shifts in post-war immigration policy than youth revolutions. Two spring to mind: _Aya_ (d. Solrun Hoaas), about a Japanese woman coming to terms with her life in an Australian suburb; or the more recent _Floating Life_ (d. Clara Law), taking an even curlier look at Australian suburbia from the perspective of a Hong Kong Chinese family. _Floating Life_ is also partly subtitled into English, which is a practical acknowledgment of its cultural mix. Both are accessible examples of movies whose drama emerges primarily from cultural diversity. (_Head On_, adapted last year from the Greek-Australian gay novel _Loaded_, would also address the questions you're raising.) But what really attracted me to your question was your use of the term "multicultural", as it has specific and problematic policy associations here in Australia, and I would be interested to hear more about the American use of the term. What does it mean? Kate Bowles University of Wollongong, Australia ---- Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the University of Alabama.