Reading through some movie feeds this morning, I ran across a review by the Times of a documentary, Crossing Borders. From the review:
In 2007, the German filmmaker Arnd Wächter brought four college-age Americans to Morocco to join four Moroccans of similar age for a weeklong tour of their country.
Source: "In Morocco, With Worlds to Learn" by Andy Webster
It's obvious, without reading anything else, that this is a film about bridging the Western and Islamic worlds. Interesting that they chose Morocco to stage this study. Morocco is very far from the center of the Islamic world and I think this shows in Morocco's culture. It is both very Eurocentric and very liberal compared to most (all?) the rest of the Islamic world. As a worlds-colliding backdrop, I would think there's a number of Islamic nations that would be more compelling than Morocco. [As an aside, Morocco has been, historically, very friendly with the U.S. In fact, Morocco was the first nation to formally recognize the United States.]
It's hard to say then whether the experiences in the documentary are somehow less authentic because of this. I'll have to see it first. Still, it's nice to see someone making an attempt to tell this type of story.
I've always thought that everyone should be forced to travel somewhere, anywhere outside of where they live to see what life is like for people somewhere else. I hope these four Americans take something positive out of their trip and I hope that positive message is transmitted through the film.
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