▶ Your Answer :
The films usually have geographical, temporal, spatial background. Directors actively utilize those backgrounds to help express what he or she wants to present through the film. Because of this, audience can learn different things while watching films. First, the film shows how ordinary citizens live in that country in reality. For example, when I watched quite number of films directed by Goeda Hirokazu, a famous director from Japan, I can witness how the streets, houses, and schools look like, the fact that a great number of students use bicycles on the way to school, and so on. To be frank, I did not take those aspects from the films seriously. To an unknown foreigner, those were merely small parts of the films. However, when I visited Japan for the first time, I realized that the city seems too much familiar. The familiarity deepened when I met a group of middle school students all riding bicycles on the way to home from school. At that time, an epiphany came to me. I truly experienced some portion of Japanese society. Second, films can provide detailed narrative about in what way the current society was formed. I watched 12 years as a Slave, it was a compelling account on the life of slave before the civil war officially released slaves. The owners, all of them were white males, insulted, tortured, and killed slaves without any qualms. They were only commodities for them. After watching the film, I understand why racial conflicts are still not peacefully resolved. The deeply-rooted resentment from the society four hundred years ago did not ever fully compensated by any agent. Third, films can teach audience phrases and accents really used in everyday life of native speakers. For instance, I watched The City of Criminals which presented Korean-Chinese life in South Korea. Their accents are usually mocked and exaggerated on comedy shows, but I have no previous experience hearing the original accents. While watching the film, I pick up indigenous accents and phrases used by Korean-Chinese, so now I am able to distinguish fakes from original speakers. Films not include only aesthetic features but also various social, geographical backgrounds of the settings. Because of this, by watching films, people can know some aspects of ordinary life of that country better, understand the current political and social landscapes better with historical accounts in the films, and also earn some original language skills.
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