Best foreign films for travelers

Living in Juneau, Alaska in the early 80s was an adventure. The sojourn fueled my passion for foreign films and travel writing. It was an oddly sophisticated city in so many ways and yet about as remote as a state capital can get. During that time, there was one theater downtown that played Indies and foreign films, served espresso drinks and real buttered popcorn before it was trendy to do so.

At the end of the work week, friends and I could be found inside the small house, settling into hard seats and always someone would ask, “Where in the world are we going tonight?” It was our escape from the grey, the cold and 13 different kinds of rain. It also fueled a lifelong addiction to travel. I can’t remember all the films but seeing those distant lands and predictably, the warmer, tropical ones, inspired my travel dreams for years.

Many times I was in the early planning or dreaming stages of a trip and longed to watch movies about the place or to dive deeply into a memoir, a fictionalized account or a great story about my destination. Other than scrubbing the Internet, asking friends or actually searching at the library (the latter because I still fancy turning real and not digital pages), it wasn't easy to find what I was looking for…until now.

There’s a site, Airtreks.com, that’s taken the guesswork out of the search and published a great resource (all chosen by the staff). The page with the goods.

I applaud the work it took to compile and hope that the page continues to update. There’s even a list of other sites with top travel books, movies and music, in case you can’t get enough. The worst part of Airtrek’s page is that you need to scroll for days to find what you’re looking for, or to not find it.

In the end, I return to longing to hold a book in my hands or a huge indexed publication like they used to update every few months at the library and flip through. I long to run my fingers down a page, try a different search, discovering and then locating the book in the stacks, which has now become the search for  the movie on Netflix or Hulu, the music on iTunes.

Perhaps I’m a reverse/perverse sort of Luddite, wanting to hold a book in my hands but it’s also the result of spending all day staring at a monitor at work. Having the real thing in front of you is a whole different experience and if you think about it, it’s closer to actually experiencing the place that began the whole endeavor.

What’s your favorite way to discover new destinations to explore?

Photo courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons, Library of Congress