In Stockholm, November is the dark and dreary month of the year and the annual Stockholm Film festival is an occasion to circumvent the worst aspects of light deprivation. For me it's a chance to meet some of the international directors - I've been involved with the festival since it began in 1990 - and serves as a reminder of how effectively popular culture communicates national culture. Cinema is a powerful medium for experiencing cultures and highlighting cultural differences and conflicts from around the world. Here are some examples:
Iran - Afghanistan
In 'Heiran' first time feature film director, Shalizeh Arefpour, tells the story of an Iranian girl who falls in love with an Afghanistan boy. What begins as a simple love story develops into the social and political issues of the region - Afghanis are second class citizens in Iran, without legal recourse.
Border Lands of the Caspian
Young Iranian director Babak Jalali, now living in London, returns to the region of his childhood, the barren steppes of the frontier lands where Iran borders on the Caspian Sea. 'Frontier Blues' follows the fate of four itinerant men in a region populated by Kazakhs, Persians, Turkmen and Russians. In the words of one of the characters it is 'a land of heartbreaks and tractors.'
Russia
At last year's festival Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky presented his film Gloss. Konchalovsky directed the superb 'Siberiada' in the 1980s - an epic film along the lines of the Hollywood Cinerama film 'How The West Was Won', about the settlement of this vast Russian region.
China
Between film screenings I find myself immersed in the latest novel of Chinese writer Qiu Xiaolong author of the Inspector Chen series - also rumoured to being prepared for film adaptation. The novels are set in Shanghai and provide some fascinating insights into the new China and the ongoing conflicts of an emerging consumerist society and the traditions and political echoes of the past.
Sweden
Strolling around Stockholm's Södermalm one cold November afternoon (one week ago to be precise) I came across two tour groups within just a couple of hours. Tourists in November is in itself an oddity, and in Södermalm, Stockholm's Bohemian quarter, more odd still.
