It seemed important that the kids could see glimpses of India before they went as with only Europe as a reference, they'd be in for a quite a shock.
Over the years I've bought a couple of videos - videos eh? remember them? - about India so we decided to go through them.
One's to mention are
- City Of Joy. I didn't care for this film very much but I rate the book as my favourite read, so much so that I bought it last week from Amazon after lending my original and never getting it back. The film does show some stuff that the kids might be horrified by (violence, scams, muggings, leprosy) but they got through it. A few questions, mainly about leprosy, later they were fine. It was a good introduction for two trusting kids on the art of scamming.
- Gandhi. I felt it important that they know about Gandhi and this was the best (infact only) introduction to him I could give. I'd forgotten how long this film was - over three hours - so we did it over four days as it is hardly fascinating viewing for an 8 year old. It took four days as we only managed to watch 45 minutes a day, but each 45 minutes actually took 75 minutes, what with numerous pauses/questions.
- The Darjeeling Limited. A slightly boring film for the kids but it's got lots of train footage in it and the train travel footage is mainly shot around Jodhpur in Rajasthan.
- Slumdog Millionnaire.. What! It's not yet out of DVD so how did they get into the cinema? Of course, they didn't and there's no other way they could have watched it... is there () ? All I can say is that if they had have watched it they would have thought that: lovely film; slightly gruesome but not worrying; really makes them want to go to India more; Mumbai looks huge; looking forward to train travel; be careful buying water, check no glue round cap;wish they were Milyunaires.
Tonight, we're going to watch The Fall as it is partially shot in Jodhpur.
UPDATE: 9th Feb...wow, the locations and cinematography are fantastic but....the film?...I'm not so sure. Check out this site about all the locations in the The Fall.