The Foreign Film Series brings the stories and experiences of other cultures to Cedarville

By Ben Konuch

When South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2019 for directing the film “Parasite,” he took the stage at the 92nd Academy Awards with a subtle condemnation and challenge for Western audiences. 

“Once you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles,” he said, “you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.” 

This charge to expand our horizons and cultural understanding through films is not just thought about by distant directors of award-winning films but is echoed by the faculty at Cedarville University. This desire to spread cultural awareness and to prompt an earnest desire in the stories of other countries gave rise to the Foreign Film Series hosted by the Department of English, Literature and Modern Languages.

Cedarville did not always have a Foreign Film Series, and in fact, wasn’t actively looking for one. The concept originated when Daniel Clark, professor of English, was searching for potential high-interest classes that Cedarville could offer when the switch from a trimester to a semester class schedule caused students to take fewer hours than was required. One of these classes, Christian Motifs in Film, was quickly implemented and is still offered. As he taught it, Professor Clark started to consider the ways that stories through film could impact students as he taught deep theological topics that were presented through films.

In a conversation with Dr. Wiseman, professor of Spanish and director of international programs, Clark made a passing comment about his interest to start a class about foreign films. Wiseman responded with the perfect counterpoint: Cedarville should start a foreign film series. This initial comment served as a small seed of an idea that Dr. Wiseman planted, watered and grew into a plan for a foreign film series at Cedarville. This program could immerse students who had grown up monocultural into the lives, experiences and stories of different cultures without spending a dollar on airfare.

After a year of brainstorming topics and films, proposing the idea to the administration and working out logistics, Wiseman and Clark showed the first entry of the Cedarville Foreign Film Series in 2005. This film was the Italian historical drama “Life is Beautiful,” which depicted a Jewish-Italian father using his imagination to try to shield his son from the horrors of the Holocaust. Since then, dozens of films have been shown to Cedarville students from China, Ireland, Korea, Japan, Sweden, India and many more.

“We recognized that as Americans we can sometimes be pretty insular and hear things on the news about the other side of the world that stays nameless and faceless, and a big part of what we aimed to do was to emphasize humanizing other cultures that we may not understand,” Clark said. “Our understanding of other cultures can come mainly from our news or our own pop culture, so one of the best ways to counter that is from media and pop culture directly from other nations that tell us themselves what it means to be who they are.”

The importance of films as a way to humanize those whom we don’t understand, as Christians called to love all people from all nations, was on full display in the first entry in this semester’s series, a Japanese anime film called “In This Corner of the World.” Released in 2016, this animated feature follows a young woman from Hiroshima who leaves her hometown when she marries a man from the nearby village of Kure. The film follows her life and struggles and even depicts the joy of falling in love and the fear of losing the ones you care most about.

As World War II ravages Japan, we see the loss, heartbreak and pain from a culture that experienced something Western audiences cannot comprehend. It forces Western audiences to grapple with what we believe about war and the innocent communities and lives destroyed by it. This film made the students who viewed it ask the hard question of whether or not they are willing to view the “enemy” in a conflict with the same love as their neighbor.

Gray Wadman, a freshman international studies major, attended this film and appreciated it greatly. 

“It was such a hard movie to watch, but I think because we were watching it together, it was much more meaningful as it was a shared experience that we all participated in,” Wadman said. “We laughed together and cried together, but we also sat together after the movie finished to process it and unpack it as a group. That was really meaningful.”

The rest of the foreign films to be screened this year tackle different yet equally important themes. “Suzume”, another Japanese anime film from 2022, is an exhilarating sci-fi fantasy that uses its magical world to delve into the real themes of death, the loss of remembrance as generations pass and a very real natural disaster. The last film of the semester, “Golda” is an Israeli historical thriller that depicts the story of Prime Minister Golda Meir who struggled to lead her nation through the tense and bloody nineteen days of the Yom Kippur War. This film shows the true story of one of the most uncertain periods of Israel’s recent history and the leadership, courage, and compassion of a woman who would save her nation.

Ultimately, foreign films enable their viewers to glimpse the stories and events of a different culture from the eyes of those who live within that culture. Some films illuminate the beauty of our differences, while some show that despite the divides between cultures, some things never change. People from across the world still struggle with the same pains, we still fall in love and mourn the loss of that love, we still hurt, we still wonder, we still long to discover, we still yearn for meaning and we still are made by the same God who loves us with equal earnestness. A foreign film can be a two-hour window into another corner of the world, one that has the power to teach us more about cultural awareness and the richness of diversity than any textbook.

So clear your schedule on Thursday night, call up your friends, and go to the next screening of the Foreign Film Series to laugh, to cry and to walk away with a better understanding of the diversity and equality that God has created us in.

Ben Konuch is a junior Strategic Communication student and one of the A&E editors for Cedars as well as the social media lead. He enjoys getting sucked into good stories, playing video games and swing dancing in the rain.