Culture and Movies

Maybe a month or so ago a Gambian friend of ours got a TV and DVD player in her house. My first(well maybe second or third) thought was that this is a great opportunity to share a bit of American culture with some of our Gambian friends. The next step was figuring out what movies our friends might like. Unfortunately this has proven harder than expected. What I realized the other day was how much culture and simply what is familiar influences the types of movies you like. The movies our friends own are Nigerian movies featuring African actors wearing West-African style clothing in familiar village settings. In short it is full of familiar imagery and story lines. However, all of our movies are nothing like that. Most of the actors are white, none of the scenes are set in Africa, and often time the clothes don't even look remotely familiar (for example the period clothes in Pirates of the Carribean). This lack of familiarity I think makes it harder for our friends to relate to the movie and thus are less likely to enjoy it. So far we have tried Monsters Inc (Pixar), Pirates of the Carribean, and Casino Royale (James Bond). Monsters Inc is the only one that I think they really liked...