One of the problems in the international media is that it assumes Europe is a one thing with similar culture. It's a diverse, complex and rich landscape with a lot of different nations , but when they try to make it "diverse" with less european base and representing their political beliefs, there is not a chance. For the witcher series they did't give it a chance, from the start the writers did't respect the source and author of the books.Just a cash grab.
US media. They are so ignorant that they think europe is one thing without differences, and so arrogant they think they know better than everybody else on everything.
To make an actually good Witcher TV series you might need to do it in central Europe. But then European tv production needs to get what's actually said in this video. How to make it export-able. I'm sure there are big enough production houses.
In England, basically no one has ever heard of any traditional English folktales. Kids grow up hearing stories that were complied by the Brothers Grimm (German)or written by Hans Christian Anderson (Danish) often filtered through the American lens of Disney. It sucks because apparently we used to have lots of great stories about fighting giants. Our old cuisine doesn't really get much attention either, beyond a few pies and pasties.
Johan egerkrans makes awesome books on folklore, of Ireland, Britain, Scandinavian, all kinds of places his books are the best. Germanic and Scandinavian folklore is so interesting and how it was practiced
@@Siebentod-rp4dk Well... Tolkien's opinion of Arthurian legend was that much of it's original content was kind of "Frenchified" after the Norman Conquest, and compared to the more traditional Welsh/British forms is vastly overrrepresented in preserved writings. And even then, much of the traditional forms that exist show the influence of both the Anglo-Saxon and Norse 'migrations', so the available record of the original tales is... more implied than observed.
As a polish person I'd LOVE to watch the Czech fairytales you mentioned, they look great (and I don't care if they're old, there's still a lot of magic in old cinema IMO).
As a Canadian person me too!!! In fact I’ve looked for them but ran into the same problem that he stated in the video: none of them have been translated to english so I was left disappointed
@@i.b.640Sort of. Some are coproductions with the GDR and have some German actors actually speaking German in them, which then got dubbed into Czech. The key word here is some.
This is what happens when the whole Western world relies on Hollywood for media like this, and it's also related to us copying every trend and style from the US whilst there needs to be better distinction from Europeans, since European culture is so rich in history.
i am very sad about taking uncritically over american halloween and even trick-or-treating; while we had our own perfect 'trick-or-treating' for st Catherine and St Martin eve, where kids and youngsters dressed up and went about village singing songs at ppl in their homes, until they gave them treats. and don't even start me on "friends' day". that is, even though St Valentine and valentine's day has no roots here, it has at least some sense. but calling it friends' day is sickest commercialisation. stands to reason: ppl usually have more friends than lovers, so let's make it about friends, so we can sell them more useless crap. 🤑
I know the rest of Europe holds us in low regard and has done for years, but we do not care. And we don’t really connect with the septics who constantly need an ego boost either… My point is, I respect our history and culture, and I would defend it with my life even if I don’t like the EU.
The movie, "Medieval" is a perfect example of this. They took such a unique story of the Hussite rebellion with Jan Zizka and turned it into the most generic fantasy/medieval film possible. Even the name is horrible. There is nothing to even suggest the story is from Bohemia.
Thsres no such thing as "European" culture though. If you wamt a renaissance of European culture, y'all need to get out fromnunder the American jackboot
@@AndRei-yc3ti THIS. ABSOLUTELY THIS. "European" is an umbrella term created because 47 countries is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much for a Merikkan mind to cope with and... why are we falling for it? First what we need to do, is every time someone says "your European..." to correct them to say "my German / French / Polish" whatever you are - whatever they're referring to. We are LETTING them lump our very different, unique and diverse identities into one without any semblance of a fight. I myself am Croatian, and 1 hour drive from me are my Italian neighbours who are nothing LIKE me - WHY are we allowing ourselves to be mushed into one?
Irish culture is still extremely vibrant despite our small population and even smaller number of native Irish speakers. Our most popular sport is not soccer but instead GAA which plays a huge role in our culture as a nation. Irish folklore and mythology is still taught to schoolchildren whilst our traditional music is famous worldwide. Yet there are still Irish people who care more about American pop culture and media than that of their own country. If you are interested in Irish culture I highly recommend the animated movies Song of the Sea and The Secret of Kells, along with the irish language film "An Cailín Ciúin"
Yeah, I would say that your culture is one of those that's pretty well known around the world. I grew up listening to Irish folk music and I started playing tin whistle like ten years ago (still do it sometimes when I'm in the mood). I've seen both Song of the Sea and The Secret of Kells (even Wolfwalkers).
I'd disagree to some degree, Irish/Gaelic culture mostly remains where the language is still spoken, and has quicker diminished with globalisation and social media. If we lose our language, we lose everything with it, our culture is lifeless without it, or at the very least on life support.
@@ofaoilleachain You should make it so that any new immigrant coming to Ireland has to go and send their kids to Irish language schools, not only would it help them integrate better with your nation by being exposed and assimilated to Irish culture and society, it would make sure these schools stay on and change the linguistic dynamic of Ireland by making it Irish-dominant rather than english-dominant and even one day officially only Irish. Language and its culture thrive when you have more use of it.
One thing that really shows how badly European culture is known outside of it is this one anecdote. A coworker of mine wanted to learn German as she lived in Germany for a few years already, but did not know the language well. I suggested to her to read original German stories with simple language for example fairy tales like Snow White, Cinderella or Rapunzel. And even after I showed the Wikipedia entries to her, she still thought it was a prank as those are obviously all Disney stories. The brother Grimm must have plagiarized him…
And when they actually acknowledge that the original creator of the source material wasn't American, they still can't fathom that the English translation isn't always accurate. For example, people used the definition of the word 'ocean' as a basis for their arguments during the controversy surrounding Disneys latest 'the little mermaid' adaptation. Now, a Disney adaptation will never be true to the source material. And I frankly don't care. But, I can say with 100% certainty that H. C. Andersen didn't use the English word "ocean" when writing in Danish.
I remember being surprised to find out most of Disney's old films were actually not original stories, but their own adaptations of folktales across European countries.
@@ninarances9074My thoughts exactly. I grew up with "traditional" German culture, and my parents didn't let us watch any of that overproduced crap. As a teenager and adult, I was shocked to find out that, not only are almost all "classic" Disney movies shitty versions of our fairytales (with the endings changed to happy ones if the original is too "dark", and any kind of hard edge taken out, most of the movies' runtime just being goofy and cheery), but a lot of people around me who didn't grow up with a lot of culture actually only know those Disney movies themselves. Literal Germans, born and raised in Germany, who think of some corny Disney film when I say "Schneewittchen" (Snow white). It's sad, really.
It even gets weirder when there are memes such as: "Disney must have hated women because the mothers were often dying" or "Disney must have been a racist because his movie was called his movie Snow White and there were only white characters!" Do these people even realize that these are stories from the middle ages when mothers often died after child birth? And that most of these stories are from Germany and Scandinavia?
Funny that in polish television you can watch movies and series made in Usa, Latin America, Turkey, India etc - but you'll never see movies from Germany, Czech, Slovakia and rest of our closest neighbours
We barely have anything Polish in Germany either. The first piece of Polish media I was ever exposed to was the Witcher, followed by the movie "The Deluge" and the recent TV-series 1670. It's kind of wild actually. There should be more cultural exchange between neighbors.
I would've like to at least see Latin America, Turkey or India. In France, I literally only see French or American movies. In fact, I would've liked to see stuff from Bollywood for example for more diverse cultural representation, instead of just being Americanized.
I'm originally from Belarus, a Russian speaking country (that also speaks Belarusian too) and I wish we watched Polish or Czech stuff too. Slavic languages are very easily understood, I would've prefer watching this growing up over American BS.
It's too long to explain. Poland don't have the cultural exception clause (France) and compare the budget size of Polish ministry of culture with other countries (eg Japan or Corean).
Europe indeed needs better cultural representation, so I recommend Slovácko sa nesúdí, old czech tv series situated in Moravian Slovakia (cz Slovácko) and one of the most human series that has ever been shot.
@@FakenameStevens What do I mean? Simple combination of setting and themes. It is situated in Moravian Slovakia and it is fully used. Costumes are real folk costumes. Stories or their parts are focused on customs such as "Ride of the King", or simpler st. Nicolas eve. Actors use local vocabulary. And it all works with thematical stories about greed, love, pride and log with gunpowder...
@@sovobor7681 Yes, but how is it one of the ''most human''? What about the series makes it ''human''? What do you mean by ''human''? What are the characteristics of a ''human'' series?
You are right and the sad thing is that we europeans ourselves are ignorant about our neighbours. Many people will see a czech, a pole and a romanian as being basically the same thing, without even considering how much cultural difference there can be within each of these countries. And what drives me mad is that we have the EU which completely ignores (or even downplays because "muh racism") cultural identities and focuses on the mere economical aspect of our union. Many italians, my countrymen, are not even aware that our anthem and the polish anthem mention each other. We ignore our shared history that is, yes, made of pointless wars and conquests, but also of great stories of friendship and camaraderie. I, for one, love all European cultures unconditionally, both national and local. All of our many dialects and languages, artistic expressions and fairy tales. And we can't expect to contend with the cultural monolith that the U.S. represent if we aren't able to put our petty differences aside and respect, cherish and love each others' traditions unequivocally. Hodně lásky z Itálie
A beautiful sentiment. I too, wish for a real unified Europe based on friendship and celebration of all our differences as well as similarities. The EU is the opposite of this.
@@Dragoniiia Yes! It's not in the shorter version that is usually sung, but it goes like this: "Già l'Aquila d'Austria Le penne ha perdute. Il sangue d'Italia, Il sangue Polacco, Bevé, col cosacco, Ma il cor le bruciò." "The eagle of Austria has already lost its feathers. Italy's blood and Poland's blood it drank with the Cossack, but it burned its heart." Pretty hardcore
@@claudiomonteverdi7126 amazing! in polish it is quite obvious that we mention italy, because it's literary in the chorus of the song. " Marsz, marsz, Dąbrowski, Z ziemi włoskiej do Polski. Za twoim przewodem Złączym się z narodem." "March, march Dąbrowski, From lands of Italy to Poland, After your leadership, we will unite with our nation"
Mount and Blade expansion With Fire and Sword was based on the novel by same name by Henryk Sienkiewicz. It had muskets, and it took place in central/eastern Europe.
This really made made me realize that Movies and TV outside the US arent made for a global audience. You will see Disney push Star Wars every where, but when a film comes out somewhere else with similar quality its not marketed.
Yeah cause most of the world doesnt make movies in a language spoken by over a billion people. Also the us doesnt really make movies for a global audience, its just that most of the western world is used to american media.
@@gvngbvngiggyQuite right. Popular media is American media. But there's room for foreign media to enter the popular sphere, which it does on occasion.
@@lapisinfernalis9052 Thats not as many as you think. We like good shows and movies. We watch media in other languages when they are good, available, and accessible (subtitles).
I definitely agree with your take on the matter. I think the main problem is we (Europeans) do not own any platforms that would help showcase the many European cultures. Just look what they did to Witcher. Despite having Bagiński and Sapkowski on board they fucked it up beyond recognition. Why? Because the production was run by Americans and they wouldn't listen to Poles.
Slight correction Kamilu. It wasn't run by Americans. It was run by jews residing in America. These international multiculti-ralists want to erase white people from reality.
The production wouldn't listen to Americans, either😭. I can't think of anyone in America who played the games and genuinely loved their choices. The discourse here is all about how terribly the showrunners messed it up despite almost everyone involved wanting it to be better. Hollywood is the weirdest corner of America, for sure.
Agree!! Heck, you could say that about alot of cultures! I am South Asian and working as a Developer on a new Video Game, inspired by that location! The culture! The Music! Art! Philosophy! So yea agree! ❤ Especially unique ones like the Witcher 3s Polishness❤
@@FolkWalkCZ Hi there! Sadly not allowed to tell! NDA binding my tongue.. 😅 BUT I can say, ur video helped shape it! We were scared of making it to "Cultural" , no more!! Thx!! 👍❤️
I am an American, but I absolutely love learning about new cultures through media. Especially about the folklore and legends of that culture. I never knew much about Eastern Europe until I lived with a bunch of people from Bulgaria and Romania and Russia in Japan and they taught me about their own home countries, songs, and dances. Hollywood has an issue of just painting over everything with a generic brush and I’d prefer to have more dynamic and rich stories featuring and displaying unique aspects of more cultures, including less represented European cultures.
Had a stupid tought. Why not to make coop channel with people around the world that like you want to spread the awareness of cultures. I think that it would be one of most popular channels on YT in no time.
I would love to help with this. I don't know how much use I would be considering I'm not tech savvy, but i can write, and I've written and published my own short stories based on goan (local indian) folklore. I'm currently working on an anthology of my own but would love to collab with like minded individuals regardless of monetary gain. I have a day job for that.
A better question is why people during communism did a much better job of showing Czech/Moravian culture. The last good fairytale is "Princezna ze mlejna" and that was in 1994. We are so addicted to Western culture that we are losing our own. Our politicians do say "We do belong to the West" I think our elites are ashamed of our culture because isn't Western enough.
They have sort of made a museum for what they killed off in a way. In yugoslavia,romania and hungary they really ended the old ways. I have been raised by elders who were raised pre ww2... and damn they are different. And now we are even more so killing the villages than Caucescau and Rakosi XD
They try to project a politically correct culture on you. Which is not right by any means. Sure your culture may not always be correct about certain things, but so what? It’s unique and it’s your own so be proud of it. Don’t let the West impose their own way of thinking on you just because you live in Europe. Europe used to be as diverse and vibrant as Asia once, but now it seems you guys are all becoming one in your way of thinking, culture and appearance.
I very much agree about there being an appetite for good representations of various European cultures. While you made the point about Squid Games, Dark was also a popular show on Netflix and it was a German show. I do think certain streaming services allow good crossover- I ended up watching quite a few German period pieces with a relative, and what struck us was how something like a court drama about royalty ended up so much more refreshing to watch because it was about the Austrian court instead of Queen Elizabeth. The fact that Hollywood and US media is getting more and more formulaic and homogenized means that people looking for something interesting could be very receptive to good European media, beyond what Britain produces. I do think the greatest issue will be subs and dubs. Hopefully the same people who make successful anime dubs can be involved in making good dubs of European content, as that would help broaden the audience a great deal.
A main issue here, is that most of America first and foremost associates anything medieval with nothing but fantasy. They grow up knowing "lord of the rings", but live in a culture and country without any further medieval origin. They have no folklore or older history infused into their country and daily life. Which is sad, but understandable in their case. However, western Europe is more and more "becoming" America. Mostly having American products in the supermarket, seeing mostly American television, and of course, everything online on the Internet is completely Americanised. Hence our own culture and traditions are slowly becoming nothing but the American caricature of it. I can't speak for Central or Eastern Europe, but living in the Netherlands/Germany, I can say it is definitely the case here, with most sources of "traditional folklore" and medieval themed subjects available being directly nothing but American fantasy. Ridiculous "Viking" tv series etc. And it's a horrible loss.
I miss old names. In names you can def see the Americanisation. As a Hungarian, compared to 'modern' names I very much prefer older Germanic names with cool meanings, like Sigrún, Sigdrífa or even Wilhelm. Do you know cool older Dutch names?
@@sztallone415 I know what you mean, since my parents gave me an English name as well. In fact, I've recently started to pronounce my name differently at times, because older people seem to find the English one complicated. Cool older Dutch nemes... Maybe Lafawijn or Reinhart. Older Dutch names are often not unlike German ones, like Hans, Karl or Johan.
@@hebanker3372 Maybe you are if you thinking that. I have seen many people yelling USA is bad but then, hey their behaviour was the same at a time. Many young people want a different aproach to life. I know so many peple that are interested in history mostly because of the books and games like KKKD, ESO.
3:14 Czech Communist fantasy movies are some of the best eastern block films. Somehow they have a magic in them that really very few people in the west ever captured.
We don't consider these fantasy movies, these are just fairytales for us. 😀 But what is really crazy are our sci-fi comedy movies, like Zítra vstanu a opařím se čajem where they time travel and one nazi wants to return to WWII and give nuclear bomb to Hitler and then he is arrested by his younger him and he wants to execute himself. 😀 These movies are that crazy that you have to watch it, I can't really explain it and I don't think someone out of Czech Republic would understand this kind of dark humor.
Witcher isn't set in "medieval" times, as the author said multiple times. It's more reminiscent of later renaissance period (of course the mentality of the characters is even more modern)
these periods aren't set in stone, nor they are based on any objective metric
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It is not as if one day it was the Medieval period, and the next day, it was the Renaissance. The transition was gradual over more than a century, took several generations. The Medieval period lasted a thousand years, from about 500 to about 1500 A.D. The Renaissance, lasted about 200 years from about 1400 to about 1600 A.D. The difference between the early Middle Ages and the late Middle Ages was much greater than the difference brought upon by the Renaissance. But it happened slowly and gradually, so that the people who lived back than didn't notice it in their daily lives. Also, the cultural difference between different places in Europe was much greater than the cultural difference in time for a given place. When people hear the term "the Renaissance", they almost always think about Italy, around 1500. But even Italy was not a homogeneous place - the culture in Naples was entirely different from the culture in Bologna, Rome, Florence, Milan, or Venice. Not even the language was the same. So saying "the Witcher isn't set in Medieval times, but is more reminiscent of later Renaissance period" tells you absolutely nothing.
@KresimirYT as you've said, there's quite a region-based difference, including the very understanding of the term. Like, here in Czechia, renaissance is mostly understood as cultural style of late medieval and early modern ages, but it seems to me that especially in the West, the renaissance is understood as period of its own (especially in England where it seems to be basically synonymous for Tudor + early Stuart reign). Not to mention that Italian renaissance started in 14th century when both the Czech lands and England were still very much medieval... That being said, OP was somewhat right that Witcher with its pikemen and landsknechts really gravitates more towards the end of late middle ages and early modern period than your typical "medieval fantasy". Then again, gunpowder is absent, magic exists, and there are probably quite a few inconsistencies in the technology throughout the story, so who knows...
The reason anime is popular is that it's catchy, over the top and appeals to kids. Your message is meaningless. What does "Japan was willing to export their culture" even mean? Did they purposefully export it? No, much on the contrary, early on anime outside Japan was living off fan translations and bootleg DVDs. If anything, anime is popular in spite of Japan's indifference to exporting it.
@@AikanaroSauron it became popular for the exact OPPOSITE reasons you mentioned though. Have you compared how "human-like" anime looks like, compared to disney or other actual cartoons from the west? West cartoons are the definition of "over the top" and it is a literal common sense for any animator in the industry. Anime is more human and more "realistic". I don't say it IS realistic, but that it is much MORE realistic than anything western cartoon ever does. Look at characters faces, their gestures, their body's in both, you see how everything west is completely and utterly exaggerated and deformed, while anime is much more "sane" or better said "delicate" with their movements. Western cartoons ONLY appeal to kids, but because of anime NOT being over the top, being *more* realistic and sensible, it appeals to MOST age groups. Also considering how there are a lot of genres, not only Naruto, but something much more "serious" like Attack on Titan for example. And much much more sophisticated genres that west is not ever going to even dream to animate lol. It is just the reality. Of course it would be popular even without wanting to export it, it is usually good enough for people to even want to jump through the hoops to see it.
@@twothreeoneoneseventwoonefour5 What "argument"? You clearly don't even understand what my comment was about. Enjoy your cartoons, I don't care, that's not the point.
Europe is so rich in culture and history, it's truly a shame there's a clear misrepresentation of Europe. American Media is for America, which is fine, but the American film industry is one of the richest. The New US Cultural Empire is truly setting up cultural norms all around the world, which is a shame since we don't all need to have the same customs and traditions and stories. The best representation of other cultures that American media has ever done has always been created by people from said culture, ie Coco, or even Encanto. The thing is that is mainly because there has been a push to create media that features poc. Of course, people of color deserve representation, but so do non-western Europeans. It is not because ppl are white that they have less culture, or that it is somehow evil. Culture is culture, and culture is rich and beautiful! I will be subbing to learn more folklore! Love from Canada!
Well but germany/ austria/ switzerland are western or central europe and as a german I think we should also get representation because our culture especially for germany is only mostly portrayed with the N*zi time or maybe medieval sometimes but nobody knows about our actual traditional clothing not even the most germans because we don't even represent them ourselves wich is really saddening. There are a few good ones but they are all old from the 1950s or for example "Die Nibelungen" from the 1920s 😅 I really wish that germans/ austrains and swiss people would get a better understanding from the world but of course we also have to understand the other cultures better it's based on both sides to actually care about the culture from eachother and there is probably a main problem but yeah I would love to see more european movies with their actual culture for example I would really be interested in a movies from romania, sweden, france, the baltics, hungary but in general from all countries 🥰
I read somewhere that part of problem with european representation in US is that americans just dont like subtitles and overal didnt accept other than US versions. For example when there was succesfull swedish movie Let the riht One in, Hollywood just immedieately release US remake. It might be watered down nowdays since, VOD services like Netflix like to buy festival or "foreign" movies, But it is still there.
True. Americans are not interested in European culture unless it is Americanized version of europe. Their understanding of the Middle Ages is often limited to castles, knights and battles, while for Europeans it is tangible history. Most Europeans walk in the middle of that history every day on their way to work. It gives a whole different perspective to it. Cultural history is hard to sell to an audience that is only interested in swords and shiny armors.
same with the french Intouchables, which was made into an american production and german Honig im Kopf which was also remade for the US. i don’t understand it. seems like americans can’t look at something from outside their own country and relate to it. i’m german and most of our productions suck, honestly, but i liked the netflix series Dark at least
I have the feeling that the English speaking countries don't have a very strong dubbing industry, they are acostume to media that it's produce in english. I remmeber than when Squid Game came out I saw a lot of people mocking the english dub. I'm not saying that it's bad to see stuff in the original language, but good dubbing can make a huge diferences when it comes to introducing stuff from different cultures. I'm from Spain and there is certainly some appriciation for the voice actors that dub movies. Not mainstream famous but anyone who is minimally interested in movies nows a couple of them and it's an industry that it's talk about with care and appreciation for the craft. I have not seen something similar in the english countries, and that's an obstacle when it comes to introducing them to non-english media.
@@x-wing8785 Not necessarily. So much of the popular US media is so homogenized that anything slightly different gets attention, and more and more foreign works are getting attention. Squid Games, as the video mentioned, and Parasite were big. Dark on Netflix was also decently popular, and that's a German show.
@@elena3941 >same with the french Intouchables, which was made into an american production and german Honig im Kopf which was also remade for the US. i don’t understand it This isn't because of US audiences seeing foreign films and going "icky, make it American for us", this is a marketing decision from certain film bigwigs. Foreign language films can and have been extremely successful in the US. >seems like americans can’t look at something from outside their own country and relate to it This is utter nonsense to be honest, be better
one of the problems with europe trying to become an independent power in the world again is the relatively small landmass and depleted resources. the americans can project power and function as a world power in the way they do in part because they have most of a continent's worth of resources. i just wonder how you would go about that given that historically europe expanded/colonized the rest of the world for resources and that is no longer a real option, how would you become materially independent from the americans without becoming materially independent on others? it doesn't really seem possible in the modern global economy.
@@EPWillard You can never be fully independent but Europe still has a lot of influence in the world. France and the UK still hold sway over their ex-colonies and have good trade relations with these countries.
I like that you avoided the all-too-often repeated 'the US has no culture' or even more broadly 'the West has no culture'. I state that because almost everytime I saw someone interested in European culture, there was an undercurrent of 'mine is better because it's mine' ('Mine' usually boiling down to 'anything before we stopped living in forests'). Very cool video. I'll drop in more often :)
The US has culture but a lot of it is so money based that it’s more of a cash grab. They made all the Christmas movies and lights and presents but it’s a seasonal push for consumerism due to it being very recently made. What other culture makes buying objects so important?
@@FakenameStevens When your ancestors less than two generations removed were living in the little house on the prairie, having any consumer goods is worth celebrating. This abject hatred and dismissal of white American culture is so gauche. Please stop.
@@FakenameStevens oh yeah of course mate nobody every made money marketing aspects of their culture before, not like we've been doing it for thousands of years, this is a borderline reddit take.
@FakenameStevens You are technically correct, but only on that technicality. American culture is not the only one where material objects, which require money, mind you, have a great value. Look to many post-soviet countries or ones with large rural populations - having a car license or a car overall is an important part of growing up, not because 'The Yankees do it' but because it is a genuinely important part of living in conditions where there are large swaths of land to cover.
I think one of problems and barriers that prevents genuine European cultural depictions from mainstream media is the current zeitgeist- many ppl specially in western half of Europe( but its spreading to East too) a/ dont know actual European history and culture and b/ dont like European history and culture. Thanks to ppl in media, academia and politics whole generation or two grew up believing anything native European is just white racist boring imperialistic monolith thats not worth preserving and only redeeming thing would be to add to it or even replace it with cultures and ppl and food and traditions from other parts of world, preferably having the darkest skin colour available just nothing white. famous examples would be complaining how Czech game from Hussite wars is too white with not enough ppl of colour or how in recent years theres trend in western TV shows, documentaries etc to portray every famous person from European history by someone of visibly African origin.
@@FolkWalkCZ In France, you can try to do such a thing, but you'll get censored or jailed for it, Wokism is a corruption world wide that have the intention of eradicating us.
Just sounds like you want to rival "Americans" in their manifest destiny thinking and decide what "European" culture looks like. And it looks "Western" with Luxor from Vegas, none of that dirty brown "Latin America" stuff. LATIN, ffs.
As a Polish/Ukrainian, I grew up with Ogniem i mieczem, and generally with the whole trilogy directed by Jerzy Hoffman. These movies were as influential as Star Wars to me, and they deserve worldwide recognition. Thank you for mentioning it.
The most recent example of trying to export culture I can think of is Mavka: The Forest Song. And they did translate it into english, though I'm not sure how well it did commercially. While it's not really a fairy tail, the original play is heavily inspired by folklore.
this video really made me think honestly, i'm very proud of my European/French culture but, i feel like that sadly because of internet i've been deeply Americanized and i must admit that i really feel out of touch with the culture and history of my own country (as a lot of people does sadly) and i think it's a really, really bad thing, especially the fact that it's not just me but a ton of people in France and other Western Europe countries as a whole, since this is exactly how stories and culture get lost in time i can't wait to check more of your channel i've for some reason always had a love for the little i know of the cultures of central Europe and especially places like Poland or Czech republic
As an Englishwoman (NOT British) I feel the same. We are becoming too Americanised and we have people, mostly self-hating Lefty "intellectuals", telling us our culture doesn't exist.
I would love you forever if you translate the czech fairy tale movies. The czech version of Beauty and the Beast is soooo much better than the yawn inducing remake Disney pulled out.
Europe is a small continent but pretty diverse culturally. The main problem is the funding, and the desire to actually create something interesting which should also have subtitles in english + other main languages. A project like that needs to be popular in Europe first, and then the momentum could be pushed worldwide. Another problem is: where to start? Which culture of the european nations has the highest probability of becoming popular? I am from Albania myself, we have lots of folktales and yet I am pretty sure no one would care about them.
I don't agree with this. The answer for the funding is simple - get with the times. It's so simple to start a TH-cam channel or present your culture on other social media platforms, grow your audience and after it gets big enough you can either fund your own project or start crowdfunding campaign. Look at how successful Shad from Shadiversity has been with his fantasy books and comic books. Critical Drinker is now doing a movie based on his book. You just need to start representing your culture online. I don't agree that no one would care about folk tales from Albania. Some people told me in the past that Americans won't care about Czech fairy tales and folklore. My channel is proof that they were wrong. People are hungry for unique and interesting things they haven't seen before, you just need to make it available and easily accessible to them. That means presenting it in English on the plaforms where they already are.
Oh, and one more thing. "where to start? Which culture of the european nations has the highest probability of becoming popular?" Who cares? The market will decide that and I don't see a reason why they couldn't be all popular. Every nation can have its own creators who represent their culture. It can become whole genre. As Americans say - a rising tide lifts all boats. So we can support each other as Europeans and fellow enjoyers of culture and folklore.
As a german I agree with that the problem that the desire to actually create something is probably one of the main things. There are of couse always people that are corious about history as for me and therefore I am also interested in the cultures from europe but I think many people from the european countries especially if they are more western or central as for me, they don't really care about their own culture, their traditional clothes and so on and that is really sad but as a german it's also a bit more complicated. But I think that is probably the main problem when it comes to this. If we would make a traditional german/ austrain movie with Trachten and folklore people have to be really or kind of interested to actually watch it but many people probably won't because they are used to the movies/ series from netflix. But I would be interested in a movie about albanian culture since I've known many albanias actually during my school years but it is just the question of how we actually get to this movies because of course I see when netflix puts out new movies but I don't see when for example a new historical movie from albania came out if I didnt escpically searched for it and that is probably a big issue 😕
I'm neither European nor slavic but this video also applies to my own ancestor's culture from Asturias, Spain. Everything we do is always for ourselves as some sort of secret hobby, no wonder our homeland is now seen as some sort of empty rental cabin land
Yes im Portugues and we have the same issue, we keep our traditions secret, too! Its so wierd, last week i found out about this Celtic Carnaval Fastival in the Village of Podence. And i as a Portugues was like, how does it come that i have never heard of this Fastival before. Do you guys also have something simular to the Podence Carnival?
@@sapereaudediogenes7282when I was 20 years-old I went to a Celtic music festival in Ortigueira, Galicia. I'm sure there are many other Celtic festivals in Galicia that I don't know about.
there is a disadvantage in being guided by someone. then you will have to adapt to someone else's culture, someone else's agenda and act to the detriment of your native language. for example, kingdom kam was criticized for the lack of black in the game and he himself did not have the Czech language at the start, which upsets me because I wanted to listen to Czech swearing. I really respect what the author does, but I really want to hear his native language, because it's the language that I love. if we talk about promotion, then I am in favor of the approach when the finished product is translated into other languages. you do not need to act to your detriment, infringe on your language and culture. for example, in my home country (Russia) there is a lot of good content that is not translated. I am in favor of translating it into all languages of the world, but I am against bending to someone else's culture and agenda. we have to do for ourselves and then share with the world. and not to do it for others, and then be surprised that our culture is dying. this happened in Russia when, in pursuit of the West, we did not notice how we killed our film culture. and now we are taking up our heads and reviving the old Soviet school and trying to fight Westernization.
As a fellow Spaniard and Catalan, I sing for the cultural diversity in Spain and give a shout-out to our regions. Catalonia may have gotten a better rap because of the political climate, but that has come with a lot of power mongering that not everyone agrees with and I'd definitely love to see more of other areas as well. So - kudos to you, dear northern siblings!
Well, I don't know of any "secret" ones per se, as far as I know you would be able to read about the one my family is most fond of, the Festival of Saint Peter (Fiesta de San Pedro en la Falguera if you are into "proper naming") and La Virgen de la Guía because my fam is from Llanes
As an Australian of English&Celtic Ancestry. It's very hard to engage with the cultures of my ancestors because so much has been misrepresented and just eroded away at through colonisation, I've always hoped to pick up Irish or one of the other Celtic languages of my ancestors and incorporate little things that we might have stopped doing culturally but it's hard you know to get good information that you can trust Even just in the context of Australia, so much of our culture is being washed due to the dominance of American media. The little differences are starting to disappear and it concerns me. I remember reading this quote once by Woody Guthrie, that southern accents used to sound different before the rise of the 'American country accent' in the 1930s and that they didn't sound like that originally but a decade later that original accent he was talking about was gone and they now sounded like those who spoke in the film. Like caricatures of themselves, which is a scary thought because that only took a decade.
Oh you can sure feel a difference. Overall conclusion from movies from USA is that humanity is measured by ability to communicate and realize its goals. Crocodile Dundee, Storm Boy (1976) and H2O series are about how humanity is measured by creativity and ability to feel.
Thank you for giving a couple of reccomendations of Czech movies, I will definitely watch them. I was about to mention the Ogniem i Mieczem: I believe I have seen it somewhere with English subtitles (maybe even Netflix?) because I have sent a link to my friend abroad. It is actually a well known movie across former PLC countries and even in Russia. The magic thing is: its about our conflicts, and every side of these conflicts loves the movie 😂 I am currently making subtitles to my absolute favourite movie Noce i Dnie (1977) that is 4 hours long. It was nominated for Oscar in a "foreign movie" category and labeled as "Polish Gone with the Wind". Its masterpiece in my eyes and a pill that contains everything that is Polish. The director of this movie is now a lecturer at some American movie-making university.
Noce i dnie is a masterpiece. For everyone interested I recommend "znachor" as well, all 3 versions (the pre II ww, prl and netflix). For me the sound of meadow is quintesential. If a movie has this sound im in heaven 😂😂😂 pure slavic nostalgia
Promoting European culture is hard, because there is no European platform like Netflix, Amazon or even HBO that would allow to do it on a large scale. For example "work" of Mr. Bagiński on The Witcher series shows that someone who understands his culture and (I still believe it) could contribute many good ideas, has nothing to say, if the show runner treats him like an advertising puppet. This culture is complicated even for us, and Americans doesn't have the time nor the will to really learn about it. I wish all the best in your youTube journey. Ps. I really like the "woven" background, find it really nice and calming. Maybe you could experiment with changing colours to visually signal different topics. Just an idea ;)
And who's fault is that? It's not like Europe doesn't have the capability to do a Netflix or Amazon. It's just that here people seem to have zero interest in it, or the countries can't agree to create a European platform. it's exactly like with the military in some countries. Why bother, the Americans already handle it. There's no drive to have a European counterpart. Transatlantic friendship is one thing but before WW2 Europe had a much more international presence.
Baginsky is a mixed bag. On one hand, he was the one that convinced Sapkowski to give Netflix a shot to create the show. That is an almost impossible task, considering that he despises video games by CDPR, but Tomek somehow did it. On the other, he frames western audience as social media addicts that don't care about story that makes sense and they only want emotion. In an interview, he literally described it as simplifying of the story for Americans that watch TikTok. Hence why there are so many changes in the show compared to the books. So I'm not sure what to think about him. I'm mostly angry that he let the show writers do what they did and the explanation for it is just stupid. I feel like he betrayed the fans of the book. And in no way was he an 'advertising puppet'. Outside of Poland nobody knows about him, except Witcher fans. The real advertising puppet was Henry Cavill.
Netflix is it is relatively easy (for Euros too) to get a show or movie published compared to other publishers. TH-cam is also viable, like only somewhat recently over the past few years people realized you can put full TV style documentaries on youtube and people will watch it.
@@LeutnantJoker well, they kinda started fighting amongst themselves, decimating their populations and economies, and with the independence of so many colonies, many European countries lost a lot, so that's probably why their international presence has diminished.
When I thought a litter more about it I realized that now European culture has a great chance because we live in dark ages of american entertainment. It's still produced but quality is low so people are searching for something different. If European productions focus on quality instead of ideology then meaby there will be no need for marketing or external support because people will come themself looking for something good and different from what they see everyday.
The quality is hard to find these days, though. The older fairytales and movies had better stories, better writers. The dark age of Hollywood / Netflix / western production also comes with bad writing, people are disappointed (Witcher, again). It's a bigger problem than just pushing ideology or being better at marketing. Today everyone think they are good at everything, people can't take criticism and don't feel the need to better themselves and their work. People need to learn how to tell good stories, not just glue random archetypes together. I haven't seen the Princess cursed in time yet, hopefully it's better than your average annual Christmas fairytale 😅 (Good luck with your channel! Subscribe. - older Czech expat lady.)
@@elliesenko5173 The Princess cursed in time is not very good unfortunately. I've seen only the first one and it's sort of a Groundhog Day in a fairy tale setting with wannabe Marvel visual effects. That's why I said that it’s trying to be more of a fantasy inspired by the culture from the West so there’s not much Czech culture left in it and it doesn’t represent actual Czech fairy tales very well. From what I've heard the second one is trying to be even more of a fantasy or "Marvel movie". That's what I hate about this whole thing. Instead of trying to be distinctively Czech even our fairy tales are now trying to be like American pop culture. And those are the more forward-thinking ones which are actually available in English. Most of our other contemporary fairy tales are just dumb infantile comedies with stupid comic relief characters and filmmakers churn them out every year like on a conveyor belt because that's the "tradition". But no one is really going back to romanticism era of classical fairy tales which were often creepy, dark and morbid. I'm convinced that people would love good old fashioned fairy tale in that style. I want to do a video about this subject in the future and my dream is also that I'll some day convince enough people to make such a fairy tale with me. I already know people that would be able to do that but I want to grow this channel first so the audience is bigger and I can get crowdfunding for the fairy tale or I can make enough money to invest in it myself.
For example I think the Greeks should try creating a lot of movies about Greek mythology or even some more modern Greek stuff too, but in any case all of Europe would get addicted to Greek cinema if they actually try and do quality stuff, like the Japanese did
as a Serbian who just stumbled on this video and channel, I gotta say, you are absolutely correct. The historical richness of the Slavic and particularly Eastern European culture is unfortunately still largely unprecedented. But when we look at other cultures that have been able to take the world by storm with their media and fiction that is marketed towards the foreigners, why are we the ones keeping to ourselves? I think we really need to try to maybe create something to capture foreign audiences and allow them to explore our culture, traditions, and customs. Because there are simply many beautiful stories to be told and created that I believe have immense potential. I think there might be a fear or reluctance to do so because perhaps some people feel like they don't want to "ruin" their traditions and customs by exposing them to foreign eyes. Or maybe due to the fact that unfortunately, in order to align with the industry today, your story will be heavily altered and in a way "mellowed" out, unless you are working with like minded people. Nevertheless, great video! I am glad someone is trying to bring more attention to it. Keep up the good work!
I would love to see a high budget and historically/culturally accurate movie on the Battle of Kosovo. Its unfortunate that the political situation with the US and Serbia would probably never let that happen.
@@ColoradoStreamingDo I know. From Turkey we got Muhtsem Yüzyıl about Sultan Suleyman in which they didn't hesitate to show that jannissaries were brutal and formed from kidnapped boys trained from young age to be a soldier and shown all sorts of violence
The problem with Eastern europe.is that Eastern Europeans are treated as the "trash" of Europe and so nobody wants to see their cultural products. The othe problem is Eastern Europeans have an inferiority complex (even though they are superior to Western Europe) and try hard to be friends with Europe rather than reorienting towards Asia where they will be more accepted
@@ColoradoStreaming It would be amazing! But I don't think we should be limited to just historical depictions, even though that was definetly a central theme of this video. I personally believe that the mythology and fiction too is extremely rich. However, socio-economic factors(at least in the Balkans) really can be a discouragement to pursue careers related to creativity. We've got a lot of development to do before we reach a society that fully embraces creativity as part of its industry.
As a Czech, I am very grateful that someone, even from my country, is talking about this topic and I think that more and more people are slowly realizing that we Europeans have a very rich culture that must be protected at all costs. Not only the folklore or medieval culture aspects, but also the ancient pagan aspects, which of course are followed by later folklore and traditions, are very astonishing and equal to, for example, ancient Egypt or Asian things, which are very well known throughout the world. Good job man!
I know this feeling. I'm Danish and I would love if the Scandinavian countries would put more effort into make historical movies or TV series. but very often when they are given the opportunity to make historical shows. They always end up butchering it. (Looking at you, 1864 Danish TV series. Who puts a freaking ice wizard in a historical TV series?!!!)
Hahaha! Same with Bitwa pod Wiedniem. What on Earth made Italian director think that putting a monk turning into a wolf was a good idea? Accept for bad CGI and said monk I'd say it's a good movie.
I wholeheartedly agree, Ive started working on a book series/franchise that takes place in the united kingdom and I really wanna include/combine some mythological creatures from czech one of the stories I wanna write will heavily focus on this, with a witch that is basically polednice and vodník combined the explanation for why these appear more around the world is because theyre ghosts (in my lore I mean), hense why in this story vodník is actually a woman
As a German, it hurts my soul to see how a lack of culture our people often attribute themselves to. We recently argued at our school whether we should do a culture day this year, and all the German students said "And what would I be supposed to wear? Dirndl and Lederhosen?" Please, we are NORTHERN GERMAN. Bavaria's culture is completely different from ours, and if you took like ten seconds to look up "Nothern German traditional costumes" or "Frisian costumes" you would quickly realize that there are dozens of different cultural attires that most *German* people nowadays are completely unaware of. And most of them don't even look like Dirndl or Lederhosen, they look a lot more similar to many Eastern European costumes. It really hurts seeing this, and the fact that social media toxicity is making German teens, European people, feel like we are like "American white people that have no culture" (which btw. isn't even true either, *everybody* has culture) is making this even worse lately. How come that an entire country, thanks to *foreign* stereotypes, completely forgot their cultural heritage? It's no wonder that we are bad at representing our culture, if we completely forgot it exists.
As a south gernam from Baden Württemberg I fully understand you, it is also quite sad to see. I would love to see more representation of our traditional clothes not only from Bavaria but for me here for example especially the Trachten from Blach Forest/ Schwarzwald. There is one beautiful movie and one of my favourite movies wich is called "Das Kalte Herz" from the 1950s and it plays in the black forest region but it in this movie you can beautifully see the culture fron this region 🤍
A big problem is accessibility. I looked up With Fire and Sword after learning Hellish Quart was based off it, only to find that there were no translations available. I can't learn an entire language every time I find a foreign story I'm interested in, it's just not feasible. This also applies to non-European and even some Western media. There's this Spanish series I enjoyed called Aguila Roja (Red Eagle), and while I'm fluent in the language, I haven't been able to find any place I can watch the series in its entirety: not legally and not even in the pirate networks. I haven't found any hard copies for the complete series either. There are also some Brazilian dramas I grew up with that aren't available at all through streaming or physical, even though I _know_ there are Spanish dubs because those are what I watched-and I don't think they even have any English translations. It's kind of frustrating, like when you're desperately searching for a piece of lost media. I think the most important step is to make these works more easily accessible to a broader market.
About Brazilian média the culprit is the Globo Group (the major Brazilian media enterprise). They decided to have their own streaming service GloboPlay so they don’t license their content to other streamings even though GloboPlay isn’t lucrative. I’m not subscribed to GloboPlay so I don’t know if they translate their dramas to English, Spanish or other languages, but if you’re interested you should check out if it attends to your needs.
I'm glad that I found your channel. There are lots of rich cultures and history in the world with a lot potential from every corner of the world. I'm sick of Hollywood and Disney remaking and retelling the same story over and over again. I want a story which is rarely exposed, or even translated for the international release of movies and books. Plus the representation of people outside the white European. They don't need to replace a European as African, and we can see local folklore or history from great persons from said geography and demography. Hence prevented the cultural war we have today.
It has never been easy to enter market in USA. It hasn't been since time of Hays code. Having considered how monopolized by big brands it is I do not expect creative ideas or good quality from them
First of all, really appreciate your channel! The Witcher 3 game introduced me to Polish/Czech/Middle European culture and folklore. I have since read the first two books, and is working my way towards the later books in the series. As I read more, I really want to dig deeper into the folklore behind the stories but couldn't find many good resources, at least not in English. What you are going opens a window for us willing to learn, so thank you! Secondly, I just want to mention that I absolutely agree with your point of "If you leave it to Hollywood, they will butcher it." What I'm about to say is my own opinion, sorry in advance if it's a bit harsh. As a Chinese, I have major issues with American film industry's unfair depiction of our culture. But I guess it is done by choice, as they don't want to represent us in positive images. It surprise me that European culture suffers from American arrogance as well. And that makes me want to see more qualitied representations of cultures done by the people who love and appreciate them.
As an American I can say that isn’t entirely true. There’s a guy in my state of pa who translated the whole of njals saga in English. Where there, it’s just most of us don’t have a budget….and the woke are constantly dangling a sword over are heads. I’d myself would so make a fantasy Europe if I had the budget.
Yeah.. I mostly stopped watching American productions because they were getting repetitive (Americans save the "world" - the US - from either aliens, natural disasters or other nations) or insulting as usual (German Nazi*, Russian Mafia, "Arabian" bo**ers... they do this to every country unless they want to romanticize those, like falling in love with an Italian man etc.).
This is why I love the author Naomi Novik. Her book Uprooted really connected me to what it would look like to have modern fantasy influenced by Polish culture. We need more like that!
1:21 this statement here is exactly what I’m doing, I enjoy mythology and folklore from all over the world but being English I’m especially interested in those closer to home, Celtic myths and stuff are great and Beowulf is fantastic but I’m most interested in King Arthur, it’s a very fascinating literary tradition, I also despise modern historical romance, so I decided I was going to write my own chivalric romance in verse, free verse not alliterative verse because I’m not practiced enough to do so currently.
Some Norwegian films/TV series are making breakthroughs on this front. Ragnarok is a decent TV series and it was filmed in Norwegian and is also subtitled + dubbed in numerous languages. Make good stories available to people in a language they understand and market it to them, then they'll watch.
Some of our (Czech) fairytale movies are known in other European countries, often because they were coproduced there. (IIRC Tři Oříšky Pro Popelku is quite famous in Germany and maybe some of the Scandinavian countries?) And some of our classic movies have been released in English on bluray, most recently "Adéla ještě nevečeřela" and "Tajemství hradu v Karpatech" by a boutique company called Deaf Crocodile.
Czech, Polish and Italian old movies/fairy tails were the beeest back in the day, they exported them to other slavs in the Balkans with dubbing. This needs to be resurrected.
Glad you mentioned KCD. Damn I sank some hours into that game, and it's a great example of precisely what you're talking about. Hell I've never been to Czechia, but I recognised Pirkstein instantly in this video, and it put that whole area on the map for me. It's great that if you go onto Google Maps and zoom in to places like Rataje, there are clear references to the game. Rattay Tourney is marked for instance, with review comments like "I love coming here to watch Black Peter best the locals! Well worth the Groshen." Go up to Uzice and there are review comments on the church there referencing Father Godwin getting drunk. There's loads of little references that users have put on there, and pretty much any place that featured prominently in the game has some gamer comments to the real life place on maps. It made an impact on people, and they tuned in to Czech history, and they enjoyed it. I sure know I did.
My time in Prague, Kolin & Pilsen, made my heart hurt, like I was fixed on a painting of the past. Longing for a world that no longer exists, knowing it could be better.
We should celebrate the cultures but we shouldn't pretend like those were some better times, we have to also remember how bad it was for people then, the reason those old stories had so much heart is exactly because how hard the life then was and if we just pretend that it was all sunshine and rainbows we remove depth from it. Nobody should want to live in the past but everyone should know and respect it.
I'm so glad that yt recommended this video to me. Im Polish and while we were on a holiday with my family in Spain. There were bunch of people in folk outfits playing music and dancing on the street. Me and my dad looked at each other and went "damn, why we can't do that in Poland? We have beautiful culture here too!". Your video really speaks to me. I dont like globalization, It makes everything the same and boring. We really should celebrate our cultures. Anyway, you have my subscription hope to see more videos :)
you have lots of people in Poland who keep traditions alive. You just haven't come across them yet. Shouldn't be too difficult, though. google for traditional music, dances or dresses in Poland and get into it instead of complaining.
Bruh it's already present in Poland. Like Lipka Zielona, etc. Meanwhile in stateless nations of France like Alsace, Provence, Nice, Gascony, Savoy, it actually is almost non existent.
@@gamermapper bullshit there is lots of indigenous traditional music, dancing and folklore in those regions of France. you just have to go look for it in the right places. maybe try a festival such as Le Son Continu or some folk dance workshops
I couldn't agree more with this video (so glad I got it in recommended) it echoes my thoughts perfectly. I'm from Bulgaria and I do have vids about Korea on my channel because thats what i studied about in uni but it's been tremendous amount of fun to sneak in there stories of Bulgarian folk tales and traditions as well. It really feels like it's up to the individual to popularize their culture, cuz as you said our countries are falling into the trend of copying America which is very unfortunate. But I'm hopeful things will get better. And you keep up the great work!
YES PLEASE! I know sod all about most European folklore except the obvious bits or those that inspired something like Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter.
I'm still waiting for English translation of Meekhan (Robert M. Wegner) and The Snake Theater (Agnieszka Hałas). Those are best Polish fantasy books I found recently.
I only learned about the rich Finnish culture this summer. It is different from other Nordic myths and cultures. And 100% agree that most African countries need to step up their game too. It is hard to find their folklore and Hollywood doesn't represent them either.
I give my pov as an italian: there has always been a struggle in italy between the preservation of regional cultures, omologation to the italian identity and to the foreign us-imported and now the very prevalent japanese culture. There are a lot of regional things we preserve that deserve more cultural recognition and i wonder where lies the right balance in the blend of theese three (regional, national and international) layers.
As an American, I love this so much and heartily agree! I would love to discover films and shows about different cultural folklore. In my elementary school we had a Russian teacher who taught us the alphabet and counting, and also described the culture and showed us documentaries, traditional costumes, and folklore. There was even a Russian dance club! To this day I still remember some of the Baba Yaga stories he read to us and I think it made me more excited to hear different stories and tales from around the world. I would note that, while English translations do increase visibility, my husband and I love watching studio Ghibli and other foreign films in their original language, as it retains the actors' intonation as well as a [usually] more literal translation. I would be equally interested in watching films from anywhere in the world with subtitles instead of an English dub.
Great video! This does not just apply for great local folklore, but European history in general. I still can't get my head around the fact that there is still no good film or show about the French Revolution, except for the ones made by the French, or the Russian Revolution/Civil War, again except for the Russian ones. As a Dutchie, I can say there is enough in our history books for a Game of Thrones-like show, though I understand its difficult for a Hollywood screenwriter to learn about these things when unfamiliar with the language. We should export more!
This video strikes a chord within me. I love history, folklore and traditions and have been blessed to be born in a country that's so rich an diverse, being at the crossroads of western europe (france). We carry the roots of germanic nations latin nations, celtic nations. Ask you average frenchmen where he's from and if he knows anything about his region of origin, you'll get nothing, zilch. In fact id be surprised if the person actually remembered the classics he's been taught in school (at least if they are). We're surrounded in history yet the average man is more interested in "exotic" cultures like japan or africa then their own traditions and there's nothing our government does to help, quite the opposite. Its really saddening.
I really want to see more explanations of slavic mythology and food or reactions to the mentions in Ilona Andrews books, well in the Kate Daniels series. They obviously reinvent as they write to fit the setting (urban fantasy, magic has returned but not always and belief has power so kind of post apocalypse romance with reasons to have all of the folklore from every migrant group) but there are a lot of references and some just have no English explanation. They're getting better at providing links but omg, like this confrontation from the Magic Stars novella "....“He’s lost,” Adams mocked. “He’s young and single. He can’t resist a letavitsa. That right there is unmatched power. A single one can empty a city of every man in it.”... .... "The fallen star will feed on him and drain him dry.". Obviously I can infer and there is a description but I wanted more info or stories about the letavitsa and all I found was weird video game art. The weekly chapters on Ilona Andrews blog have links and pictures but the main character for this novella, the Roman Serial, is an American Russian volv, a priest who serves Chernobog and his home is being targeted by neoviking mercenaries (they've used nithing poles faced to his house to try to negate Chernobog's curses so its settting up to be Norwegian vs Russian folklore battle: siegecraft edition). Other references: - obryad - Morena's sacred animal - Lihoradka - Sbiten - paskudnik - nechist - the gruelling field, the twilight forest, the evening woods, the winter cathedral - Burlak, a barge puller?? Mostly I want to know why he has to drag a tree and I'm impatient but I feel like there is a fair amount of folklore and I don't know where to see discussions or reactions. Ilona Andrews is a husband and wife writing team that are slowly breaking away from doing contract work, she is from Russia and he's American and I think they're both massive nerds who really refine ideas until they can be expressed in fewer words but omg. I'm glad theyre focusing on the story but I would like to know about these myths, legends, traditions and foods.
As a Romanian I agree with this completely. I actually think we're probably amongst the worst people in Europe doing this. The Romanian filming industry and even more the gaming one are extremely poor, we basically consume almost every piece of media from whatever comes from the United States. This has even caused Romanians to use a lot of slang in English and use many English words, like they'd rather use the English word ''job'' instead of the Romanian one ''munca'', and this happens with many words as well. What you mentioned about the interview show made me remember when we literally copied and paste an American singing show ''The Four'' - no originality whatsoever. I think literature is probably the only good thing we have, there's many genres and many books illustriating Romanian culture, way of life, humour, etc yet most people don't read unfortunately. By the way, had to add. The only ''cultural export'' that Romanians for some reason keep wanting to export is the whole Dracula and vampires thing, which is not even our thing as the original novel was written by an Irish writer. We could talk about doing books, games or movies about Vlad the Impaler for example, but no, Romanians keep spreading the whole ''Dracula'' shit. Even foreigners have done movies about him yet we don't (last ones were doing Communist times).
as a romanian I hate the vampire shit, especially when Vlad was such a fuckin interesting ruler (wether you like him or not) and we also had other amazing rulers (Mihai, Stefan, Cuza), but at the same time I am glad that holywood don't adapt any of them, because you know they will add random black people and somehow make the ottomans the benevolent heroes, cuz white man bad.
Northern Transylvanian myself, can barely stand vampire jokes when talking to strangers online, even if they're just jokes. Honestly as a way of escapism from all the shit of today, I began personifying various places in Romania, because it 'forces' me to look more deeply into the history, culture and traditions and allows me to compile information I learn in a fun way. Would probably not end up posting it though, I just know I'd be called a conservative caveman who only draws white people and I didn't portray them as modern city douchebags either (I'm not conservative, I just like our roots and want to learn more stuff)
Pe mine nu mă deranjează când văd străini spunând că suntem vampiri (pentru că consider că stereotipurile ăstea de vampiri și de Dracula sunt măcar mai bune decât stereotipurile de țigani, hoți și cerșetori), dar mă deranjează când văd românii înșiși spunând asta. Cred că am văzut deja două videoclipuri pe TH-cam în care, într-o atmosferă internațională unde un american trebuia să ghicească ce limbă vorbea o persoană respectivă și altul diferit dar cu o idee similară unde tot un american trebuia să ghicească de unde era o persoană respectivă; cei doi români care au apărut (fiind rar ca România să apară în acest tip de videoclipuri) au trebuit să menționeze că vin din țara lui Dracula sau că țara lor au un personaj popular (referindu-se la Dracula). Ce e amuzant, e că americanii nici nu știau că Dracula vinea din România fiindcă ei asociază Dracula cu Transilvania, și ei cred că locul ăsta nu există fiindcă cred că e fictiv (ca și cum Narnia de exemplu). @@pidge3193
Păi de ce să așteptăm pe Hollywood sau pe străini în general să facă filme despre istoria noastră, nu mai bine le facem noi și, cum a zis omul ăsta în acest videoclip, le exportăm ca să vadă lumea cultura și istoria noastră?@@malighos
I'm a huge KCD fan from Finland and planning to visit Czech Republic because of the game. I'm a huge medieval nerd so even before that I've always wanted to visit many medieval castles but if the game didn't exist I would have never heard of these places. We don't have many castles left here in Finland so it's awesome to find out about places that have stood time :)
My cousin does concept art for Warhorse 🙂 Also, I want to start doing videos about our castles so that's something you might look forward to in the future hopefully 😉
American here. I love learning about and experiencing parts of other cultures, especially ones I have never heard of or am not familiar with. Stuff like KCD is awesome.
Polish searies 1670 gives me a lot of hope, i watched it with my husband (hes from usa) and he enjoyed it a lot even if i had to explain a few aspects. He also loved With fire and with sword because of subtitles
I think most people involved in creating entertainment like films, games, music etc are primarily concerned with making profit, not with exporting culture. When you look at it from perspective of making money, creating for the international audience is a very risky strategy. Not that it can't work, just that it has many more pitfalls and financial risks than creating for domestic audiences. Therefore usually the only people who attempt it are few enthusiasts who care deeply about what they are creating and want it to reach the widest audiences. I think both CD Project Red and Warhorse can be counted among these people and unless we have more people like that, culture exports of this sort are likely to be rare.
I’m from the US And I agree, people should definitely “create the culture”. Participated in it, teach your children, take pride in it. Someone on social media that I think does a good job at representing Hungarian culture is Anna “the pretty Shepherd” here on, TH-cam, Instagram and TikTok. I find learning about all sorts of countries different cultures so interesting . and I think a big reason for that is because American culture is so normal that anything different is interesting and eye catching. And I, too, am also obsessed with folklore, and I find it so fascinating because it’s almost like a glimpse into our ancestors way of thinking, which can be so different from our own, yet at the same time so similar. I don’t know it’s hard to explain. Lol.
American here, and I wholeheartedly agree! I’m a huge fan of worldbuilding and hope to write my own stories someday. My favorite part of world building is learning about new cultures and their history and folktales, and applying it to my stories. Ex: we have tons of medival England stories, but not many of medival Germany, or France, or Austria, etc. I want to right those kinds of stories!
Thanks for talking about this! Those movies you suggested look really great, and I would watch them if there were subtitles available! Also being from a tiny European country that has basically erased much of what is unique about its culture, I feel I need to learn more about it myself so I can properly represent it to others. You've inspired me to do so!
Thank you for another great video. I think that Poland, as well as some other countries of the former Eastern Bloc, still has post soviet complexes and still believes that the West does everything better. This belief has developed in us over the years of living in poverty behind the Iron Curtain and to this day it distorts how we view and evaluate ourselves. It's time for that to change. The US has nothing new to offer at this point and they certainly don't care about actual representation of other cultures. But the rest of the world, including Central and Eastern Europe, has a whole lot of interesting stories to offer, with a solid, authentic cultural foundation, which are much more interesting than what Hollywood produces nowadays.
Very much so. I visited Poland for 18 months a short while ago, partly because I was going to Gdansk which is the orginal Novigrad and of course also connected to my own history as a German. The only thing people constantly asked me was "why on earth would you want to come here, everything here is shit"... which is ironic because in many ways Poland is by now WAY ahead of Germany. People just don't see that yet and have a really bad opinion of their own country.
@@LeutnantJoker I am saddened by this attitude, because Poland has undergone enormous changes in the last 30 years and, thanks to the hard work of its citizens and partly the EU's help as well, it has managed to cach up to the modern standards really fast. Nevertheless, this inferiority complex and the need to adapt and blend into Western society are still strong in this country. On the bright side recently there has been a certain return to our cultural motifs, but of course filtered through the lens of modern times. Recently, for example, such productions as the film 'Peasants' or the Netflix series '1670' have been released and they were received really well. There has also been a lot of interest in folk music since the famous soubdtrack from The Witcher 3. So there is some hope I guess. I'm just not sure if the motivation is strong enough to break into mainstream 😉
Italy has a lot of culture but the last great movie that tried to tackle its medieval times that would appeal to a mass audience I can think of was L'Armata Brancaleone. One of the big issues is that producers and mass audiences here still seem to despise all genres of fiction that aren't contemporary. Literally the only things that get promoted are police procedurals, romances and comedies for the mass audiences and serious period dramas for the intellectual ones. And it's soooo goddamn myopic.
There was a Polish-Italian coproduction "Bitwa pod Wiedniem". Scenario wise it was very good I think. Just CGI was crappy and there was a scene with a monk turning into a wolf but apart from that it was a fine movie.
I think ours Is a strange case: Italy has had so much cultural impact on the west that i genuinely struggle to figure out what even Is our culture and what Is foreign addittions. In general i noticed conflict in our fiction tends to have a lot more nuance and be more down to earth, but without beeing preachy either, moreso just having a realist view of things. (Nature Is usually a positive thing but also Dangerous and brutal, for example). Other than that i genuinely couldn't tell you that much about our culture that doesn't also apply to most other western countries Aside from some folklore like the Benandanti or the Libri del Comando, wich Is unfortunate to say the least
l’ho notato anche io. di recente ho visto “la chimera”, un film che praticamente nessuno ha visto e che si merita molto di più, ma non passo una settimana senza sentir parlare di mare fuori che onestamente non trovo paragonabile a la chimera, che presenta paesaggi toscani ed arte etrusca - per non parlare del messaggio che dà al pubblico -, perché è una battaglia persa.
I'm Brazilian and I'm absolutely obsessed with the Czech Republic, specifically. Its culture and history fascinate me. I dream of visiting and even living there someday. TH-cam recommended me this video, and I was totally surprised to find out it was from a Czech guy. Caught me off guard! 🤣
I think well crafted media piece (book, game, movie, etc.) based on specific folklore is the best advertisement a region can have. I'm one of examples: I visited Prague because of the vampire battle royale game. The map was really cool and I had good time playing, so I decided to see these streets personally. I was not dissapointed. I think one of the problems is that a lot of people take inspiration from the internet culture and trends, and not from around in real life. It's sometimes really hard to look for something unique to be inspired by if you're not specific and serious about looking for it.
I live in Australia and love reading or watching cultural videos/movies. I looked up all the movies you showed on TH-cam and found most of them, yet to see if there are sub-titles or not. I'll definitely watch them if there are.
This is one of my main goals as the creator. I am Russian, and it saddens me to see how the Empire, the Soviets and now the modern government either distorted folk culture for their political gain, banned it, or destroyed altogether. I really wish to be able one day create something that represents it in the most authentic way.
Soyuz Multfilm did some really good works such as "O Miyortvey Stare Tsarevnie i siedmiyu Boyarah", Scarlett Flower (1952). Plus their Snow Queen (adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale was great) gave Hayao Miyazaki hope for future of animation
I hope you can save yours. We Germans could not for the most part. For example: There are a lot of traditional garments or dances from diffferent areas of the country, but almost all are unknown by most people nowadays, because they were fogotten due to the Nazi Regime.
coming from a slavic country myself, and sharing multiple cultural similarities, i was so mad how they butchered the witcher tv show. the games were made by a studio who loves and appreciates the culture, and not only slavic, but european in general. its a shame it ended up like that but lets hope someone does something good in the future. but i agree, considering how complex europe is, we should really be representing our culture a lot more...
Completely agreed. As an American, I have always been fascinated with world culture in general, and it seems like every other week, I hear about some book or comic or movie or whatever from another part of the world, and I'm like 'HELL YEAH, that sounds awesome!', and I try to find a copy in English, and no dice. I mean, sure; I love my own country's culture, too (and there's plenty of IT that I wish got more exposure, as well), but there is SO MUCH cool stuff out there that just never reaches our shores except as factoids on the internet. Either it's not available in English at all, or it was translated once, decades ago, and now everyone's forgotten about it, or it's available, sure, if you jump through a dozen hoops and spend a lot of money to get it. And it doesn't make sense, because so often when it DOES reach us, it becomes insanely popular - look at the Witcher, as you mentioned; look at the Scandinavian stuff like the Moomins and Pippi Longstocking; hell, look at ANIME, for fuck's sake. American pop culture has been stagnating for years, and yet it still gets exported all over the place; we NEED an influx of fresh blood, fresh influences and perspectives and inspirations. Maybe if we knew more about what other cultures thought and felt and imagined, we'd actually start having fresh ideas ourselves.
Well there are seen small steps in importing European culture abroad. Look up 'The Peasants' (2023), it is a animated movie based on nobel-prize winning Polish novel.
As a Pole, I'm not a fan of this movie. It doesn't represent Polish culture accurately. It also highly deviates from the novel (which is not always a bad thing, but in this case I feel like a realistic and complex story has been turned into an unrealistic cheesy romance).
@@meridaskywalker7816yeah, i agree, but they could't do better because the film would be to long. All the complex plot could not fit in one film. i think that it's made as good as it could be done
@@JanJan-kt3ys There is a stage musical based on the same book that was only a bit longer than the movie and it did a better job with shortening the plot. I don't think adapting the book from the point of view of one of the main characters was a good idea.
It is a phenomenon that can be observed almost everywhere in Europe: wanting to refer to the context in which i live, the Italian one, i must say that the last time i saw an attempt at cultural representation linked to tradition was with The Last King, film where the story of Romulus and Remus was retraced without mythological connotations and with a speech that tried to restore the Etruscan-Latin language to the one they would have spoken in the eighth-seventh century BC. A film that many people have seen, other than fans of historical reconstructions? The fact is that currently the representations that most suit the fashions of the moment dominate, but if you try to propose something linked to your own cultural background (with its pros and cons), the alarm immediately goes on. The Italian panorama, even just remaining in the history preceding the 20th century, would be an excellent terrain for myriads of television series and films: although there are novelists who have approached historical reconstruction (I am thinking of Valerio Massimo Manfredi, or Andrea Frediani, and others which I don't remember), the productions (almost) always point to the period 1922-1945, if we talk about past contexts. Of course, every now and then productions come out that point to the medieval period, but with farcical connotations... and, to be honest, i would be a little tired of seeing Italian productions also dedicated to streaming platforms that don't make the slightest step forward in the direction of dramatic and well-scripted stories. I launch the input: what wouldn't be a series set in northern Italy, in the period of Lombard domination, narrated in a similar way to Game of Thrones? With intrigues, dynastic ties, pitched wars for power. The factions at play face each other with battles and betrayals: from the Franks of Charlemagne to the Papacy, to the court of Agilulf up to the Byzantine interference....
It's so sad to see how this impacts people as well. I've known people who spoke better English than Dutch, there's no personality in the way young people speak anymore (at least over here). Americanisation was a huge mistake.
Wonderful video! I really agree with a lot of your points. I was born in the U.S but I also have Hungarian citizenship and I have been living in Hungary for 2 years now. I've always wished that more Hungarian folk, historical, and literary culture was more well-known around the world. A lot of Hungarians think its too esoteric or not interesting enough to warrant being spread around the world, but I strongly disagree with this. Nowadays it seems like there can be an audience for everything, and actually I've noticed a lot of videos here on youtube being made about Hungary by non-Hungarians that are getting good attention. It's amazing and wonderful they are making them, but it would be nice to get some local input as well made by Hungarians. I feel I can add to this interest-pool as I am Hungarian as well, and I've grown up with some of the culture and I have also learned some of it as well in my young adult life. I was even thinking of making some youtube videos about Hungarian literature and what books are available in English some time soon. Anyway, I look forward to discovering your channel! It seems right up my alley!
I think that the EU should have an agency focused on Cinema, with its own specific studios (probably Cinecittà in Roma aka the biggest studios in Europe) and policies to create a proper european cinema. This way we could compete with american movies, and promote and share our own culture without Americans constantly misrepresenting it and reducing it to ridiculous stereotypes from the 1930's. As an Italian, watching hollywood movies featuring italians is just painful to watch...italian characters are always played by people who clearly dont speak italian and know basically nothing about italy, and they behave in this weird way that seems like a mock of 1920 southern italians from rural villages.
That's a good idea as a concept but anything made by EU would be even more woke than Hollywood so I don't see this as a viable path forward. It's up to independent creators from different European countries to represent their culture as best as they can.
@@FolkWalkCZ yeah but that would push the problem onwards...as individual countries -let alone small, independent directors - dont have the money to make proper international works.
@@DavideGobbicchi I don't know. I think that times are changing because of the internet, social media and now even AI. I think that it's possible that soon even individuals will be able to compete with Hollywood which is failing harder and harder.
I believe you are Czech same as me. This, representing our culture and our identity as a whole is one of the biggest problems of our country. I feel like the past has given us such a hard time finding our own way and therefore we have troubles finding our identity, being proud of our country and culture. We always just try to prove ourselves that we are a modern country and that we are far away from our communistic past. Which is great, but if there is one think I really dont like about Czechia, it is the lack of identity. Hope it changes.
Yeah, Europe should make more media representing our culture. I was playing the game Blasphemous and you can really feel Spanish culture in the game instead of typical Medieval fantasy. Cheers from Portugal!
Italian here, even though I didn't played it, I saw some lore-videos about it and I was amazed by the cultural references. (hell, I even noticed a Francisco de Goya reference in the Great Preceptor boss fight)
There is lack of modern media products. Kingdom come is great example of successful product about European history, we need more like this. Anime took a lot of references from Europe but Europe cartoon studios can't compete with them on global market, don't know why
I totally agree with you and that is why I work as a literary translator for Hungarian authors. Also, I write in English as well, not just in Hungarian when it comes to my works. These are small steps, but we are getting there.
Angloids will talk about "we have no culture" despite our centuries of literary and musical endeavours from the ancient tales of King Arthur and works of Geoffrey Chaucer to the influences Lord Byron and Tolkien has on modern media as a whole, all written in English, the most spoken second language in the world, the potential here is incredible, but now the most widely appreciated adaptation of English folklore are the deeply sanitised and highly profitable versions from the American Disney studio in the 1930s and 40s. We should be at least teaching our kids the original fairytales these films are based on and not leaving that up to the Americans.
It honestly upsets me that our own culture is being wiped away for the mind virus that is "diversity and inclusion". Anne Boleyn, Queen Charlotte and Merlin were not black!
@@peachesandcream8753 Globalization does that to every culture, I think. Memnon, Moses, Jesus, and Imhotep weren't white and Aladdin wasn't Indian but they're portrayed that way in Hollywood. And we can even go back to Renaissance art and see how all the Afroasiatic Israelites and Christians, from Abraham to St. Augustine, were portrayed as white. Sometimes it's imperialistic historical revisionism but sometimes it's just plain ignorance.
@@MiguelDLewis Jesus was white, he was a Jew and was of Caucasian decent, he was also described by the Romans as having blonde hair, and so was Moses. Memnon was known for being Ethiopian (African), so where has he ever been portrayed as white?
I think each of us needs to dive deeper into our own folklore before the rest of the world can appreciate it. I'm British and I admit I don't know nearly enough about the Arthurian Legends, or Celtic folklore. We should make an effort to immerse ourselves in our own culture and then demonstrate it's greatness to others, including our children
As an American with mainly German ancestry, I'm only now trying to learn more about my roots that I'm far removed from. I have no idea what it's like to live with deep set culture! No traditional foods or activities or community or anything. It feels hollow. I so hope I can visit these other parts of the world some day! But maybe seeing more media from these places would help fill that gap in the meantime
What really opened my eyes was when I started doing day-hikes out beyond where I live in Berlin, working my way southward toward the Czech border, or up on the Baltic Sea coast on the island of Rügen. Toward Czechia you cross into a native Germano-Slavic region (the Sorbians, who speak their own Slavic language in the area around Cottbus), and on Rügen you see all kinds of Scandinavian, Slavic, and Baltic influence. It's fascinating, and such a much richer cultural landscape than what we're taught. Thanks so much for bringing attention to this. I really hope we can work our way back someday to having such a diverse culture in Europe, because it's so much more interesting than the Hollywood version.
This earned you a sub. I've always been a bit of a Slavophile, even lived in Russia for seven years - and I'd be chewing at the bit to see some Czech films added to Netflix! Would be happy even if it was just subtitled.
I'm currently planning to create a webtoon heavily inspired by Slavic folklore! I've always loved our mythological demons and other creatures (who wouldn't love a ton of bloodthirsty female demons lol). I've read a lot of asian webtoons/mangas and as much as I like them, when they're set in european-ish fantasy they tend to be butchered... That's why I thought about combining manga style with slavic setting to get to wider audience. and as a Polish who grew up in 2000s I can at least say that I've watched some Czech cartoons (I had a stack of DVDs with Krtek, it was one of my favourite shows to watch).
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One of the problems in the international media is that it assumes Europe is a one thing with similar culture. It's a diverse, complex and rich landscape with a lot of different nations , but when they try to make it "diverse" with less european base and representing their political beliefs, there is not a chance.
For the witcher series they did't give it a chance, from the start the writers did't respect the source and author of the books.Just a cash grab.
US media. They are so ignorant that they think europe is one thing without differences, and so arrogant they think they know better than everybody else on everything.
I'm pretty sure no media portrays Europe as all the same dude, it only really portrays the big boys
To make an actually good Witcher TV series you might need to do it in central Europe. But then European tv production needs to get what's actually said in this video. How to make it export-able. I'm sure there are big enough production houses.
That’s what I hate about my own American culture, is that a lot of people are a monolith
The thing is that Erope and europeans are hated in hollywood. Good luck promoting european culture.
In England, basically no one has ever heard of any traditional English folktales. Kids grow up hearing stories that were complied by the Brothers Grimm (German)or written by Hans Christian Anderson (Danish) often filtered through the American lens of Disney. It sucks because apparently we used to have lots of great stories about fighting giants. Our old cuisine doesn't really get much attention either, beyond a few pies and pasties.
"Beowulf" and "Green Knight" are good medieval stories
I always thought that england had really great storys like Robin hood or king Arthur and Merlin
Johan egerkrans makes awesome books on folklore, of Ireland, Britain, Scandinavian, all kinds of places his books are the best. Germanic and Scandinavian folklore is so interesting and how it was practiced
@@Siebentod-rp4dk Well... Tolkien's opinion of Arthurian legend was that much of it's original content was kind of "Frenchified" after the Norman Conquest, and compared to the more traditional Welsh/British forms is vastly overrrepresented in preserved writings.
And even then, much of the traditional forms that exist show the influence of both the Anglo-Saxon and Norse 'migrations', so the available record of the original tales is... more implied than observed.
@@karolinakuc4783 just read Beowulf to my 2 kids last week.
As a polish person I'd LOVE to watch the Czech fairytales you mentioned, they look great (and I don't care if they're old, there's still a lot of magic in old cinema IMO).
There is a German Dub for a lot of them. They are a Christmas Staple for some people in Austria and Germany
The old ones are great, sadly the quality became worse over time
As a French I'd love that too !
As a Canadian person me too!!! In fact I’ve looked for them but ran into the same problem that he stated in the video: none of them have been translated to english so I was left disappointed
@@i.b.640Sort of. Some are coproductions with the GDR and have some German actors actually speaking German in them, which then got dubbed into Czech. The key word here is some.
This is what happens when the whole Western world relies on Hollywood for media like this, and it's also related to us copying every trend and style from the US whilst there needs to be better distinction from Europeans, since European culture is so rich in history.
i am very sad about taking uncritically over american halloween and even trick-or-treating; while we had our own perfect 'trick-or-treating' for st Catherine and St Martin eve, where kids and youngsters dressed up and went about village singing songs at ppl in their homes, until they gave them treats. and don't even start me on "friends' day". that is, even though St Valentine and valentine's day has no roots here, it has at least some sense. but calling it friends' day is sickest commercialisation. stands to reason: ppl usually have more friends than lovers, so let's make it about friends, so we can sell them more useless crap. 🤑
I know the rest of Europe holds us in low regard and has done for years, but we do not care. And we don’t really connect with the septics who constantly need an ego boost either…
My point is, I respect our history and culture, and I would defend it with my life even if I don’t like the EU.
The movie, "Medieval" is a perfect example of this. They took such a unique story of the Hussite rebellion with Jan Zizka and turned it into the most generic fantasy/medieval film possible. Even the name is horrible. There is nothing to even suggest the story is from Bohemia.
Thsres no such thing as "European" culture though. If you wamt a renaissance of European culture, y'all need to get out fromnunder the American jackboot
@@AndRei-yc3ti THIS. ABSOLUTELY THIS. "European" is an umbrella term created because 47 countries is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much for a Merikkan mind to cope with and... why are we falling for it?
First what we need to do, is every time someone says "your European..." to correct them to say "my German / French / Polish" whatever you are - whatever they're referring to. We are LETTING them lump our very different, unique and diverse identities into one without any semblance of a fight. I myself am Croatian, and 1 hour drive from me are my Italian neighbours who are nothing LIKE me - WHY are we allowing ourselves to be mushed into one?
Irish culture is still extremely vibrant despite our small population and even smaller number of native Irish speakers. Our most popular sport is not soccer but instead GAA which plays a huge role in our culture as a nation. Irish folklore and mythology is still taught to schoolchildren whilst our traditional music is famous worldwide. Yet there are still Irish people who care more about American pop culture and media than that of their own country. If you are interested in Irish culture I highly recommend the animated movies Song of the Sea and The Secret of Kells, along with the irish language film "An Cailín Ciúin"
Yeah, I would say that your culture is one of those that's pretty well known around the world. I grew up listening to Irish folk music and I started playing tin whistle like ten years ago (still do it sometimes when I'm in the mood). I've seen both Song of the Sea and The Secret of Kells (even Wolfwalkers).
I'd disagree to some degree, Irish/Gaelic culture mostly remains where the language is still spoken, and has quicker diminished with globalisation and social media. If we lose our language, we lose everything with it, our culture is lifeless without it, or at the very least on life support.
@@ofaoilleachain You should make it so that any new immigrant coming to Ireland has to go and send their kids to Irish language schools, not only would it help them integrate better with your nation by being exposed and assimilated to Irish culture and society, it would make sure these schools stay on and change the linguistic dynamic of Ireland by making it Irish-dominant rather than english-dominant and even one day officially only Irish. Language and its culture thrive when you have more use of it.
More like American anti-culture. Everything American is diluted synthetic version of the real thing.
Do you know a good place to learn Gaelic? I am not Irish, but I love the language, Folklore, the Thuatha@@ofaoilleachain
One thing that really shows how badly European culture is known outside of it is this one anecdote. A coworker of mine wanted to learn German as she lived in Germany for a few years already, but did not know the language well. I suggested to her to read original German stories with simple language for example fairy tales like Snow White, Cinderella or Rapunzel. And even after I showed the Wikipedia entries to her, she still thought it was a prank as those are obviously all Disney stories. The brother Grimm must have plagiarized him…
And when they actually acknowledge that the original creator of the source material wasn't American, they still can't fathom that the English translation isn't always accurate.
For example, people used the definition of the word 'ocean' as a basis for their arguments during the controversy surrounding Disneys latest 'the little mermaid' adaptation. Now, a Disney adaptation will never be true to the source material. And I frankly don't care.
But, I can say with 100% certainty that H. C. Andersen didn't use the English word "ocean" when writing in Danish.
I remember being surprised to find out most of Disney's old films were actually not original stories, but their own adaptations of folktales across European countries.
@@ninarances9074My thoughts exactly. I grew up with "traditional" German culture, and my parents didn't let us watch any of that overproduced crap. As a teenager and adult, I was shocked to find out that, not only are almost all "classic" Disney movies shitty versions of our fairytales (with the endings changed to happy ones if the original is too "dark", and any kind of hard edge taken out, most of the movies' runtime just being goofy and cheery), but a lot of people around me who didn't grow up with a lot of culture actually only know those Disney movies themselves. Literal Germans, born and raised in Germany, who think of some corny Disney film when I say "Schneewittchen" (Snow white). It's sad, really.
That hurts my soul
It even gets weirder when there are memes such as: "Disney must have hated women because the mothers were often dying" or "Disney must have been a racist because his movie was called his movie Snow White and there were only white characters!" Do these people even realize that these are stories from the middle ages when mothers often died after child birth? And that most of these stories are from Germany and Scandinavia?
Funny that in polish television you can watch movies and series made in Usa, Latin America, Turkey, India etc - but you'll never see movies from Germany, Czech, Slovakia and rest of our closest neighbours
We barely have anything Polish in Germany either. The first piece of Polish media I was ever exposed to was the Witcher, followed by the movie "The Deluge" and the recent TV-series 1670.
It's kind of wild actually. There should be more cultural exchange between neighbors.
Pat&Mat, Krtek?
I would've like to at least see Latin America, Turkey or India. In France, I literally only see French or American movies. In fact, I would've liked to see stuff from Bollywood for example for more diverse cultural representation, instead of just being Americanized.
I'm originally from Belarus, a Russian speaking country (that also speaks Belarusian too) and I wish we watched Polish or Czech stuff too. Slavic languages are very easily understood, I would've prefer watching this growing up over American BS.
It's too long to explain. Poland don't have the cultural exception clause (France) and compare the budget size of Polish ministry of culture with other countries (eg Japan or Corean).
Europe indeed needs better cultural representation, so I recommend Slovácko sa nesúdí, old czech tv series situated in Moravian Slovakia (cz Slovácko) and one of the most human series that has ever been shot.
European Culture Representation - "Slovácko sa nesúdí, old czech tv series situated in Moravian Slovakia"
What do you mean the most human
@@FakenameStevens What do I mean? Simple combination of setting and themes. It is situated in Moravian Slovakia and it is fully used. Costumes are real folk costumes. Stories or their parts are focused on customs such as "Ride of the King", or simpler st. Nicolas eve. Actors use local vocabulary. And it all works with thematical stories about greed, love, pride and log with gunpowder...
@@sovobor7681 Yes, but how is it one of the ''most human''? What about the series makes it ''human''? What do you mean by ''human''? What are the characteristics of a ''human'' series?
You are right and the sad thing is that we europeans ourselves are ignorant about our neighbours. Many people will see a czech, a pole and a romanian as being basically the same thing, without even considering how much cultural difference there can be within each of these countries.
And what drives me mad is that we have the EU which completely ignores (or even downplays because "muh racism") cultural identities and focuses on the mere economical aspect of our union. Many italians, my countrymen, are not even aware that our anthem and the polish anthem mention each other. We ignore our shared history that is, yes, made of pointless wars and conquests, but also of great stories of friendship and camaraderie. I, for one, love all European cultures unconditionally, both national and local. All of our many dialects and languages, artistic expressions and fairy tales. And we can't expect to contend with the cultural monolith that the U.S. represent if we aren't able to put our petty differences aside and respect, cherish and love each others' traditions unequivocally. Hodně lásky z Itálie
A beautiful sentiment. I too, wish for a real unified Europe based on friendship and celebration of all our differences as well as similarities. The EU is the opposite of this.
Oh Italian anthem also mentions Poland? that so cool :D
@@Dragoniiia Yes! It's not in the shorter version that is usually sung, but it goes like this:
"Già l'Aquila d'Austria
Le penne ha perdute.
Il sangue d'Italia,
Il sangue Polacco,
Bevé, col cosacco,
Ma il cor le bruciò."
"The eagle of Austria has already lost its feathers.
Italy's blood and Poland's blood it drank with the Cossack, but it burned its heart."
Pretty hardcore
@@claudiomonteverdi7126 amazing!
in polish it is quite obvious that we mention italy, because it's literary in the chorus of the song.
" Marsz, marsz, Dąbrowski,
Z ziemi włoskiej do Polski.
Za twoim przewodem
Złączym się z narodem."
"March, march Dąbrowski,
From lands of Italy to Poland,
After your leadership,
we will unite with our nation"
@@Dragoniiia Włochy 🤍❤Polska
Mount and Blade expansion With Fire and Sword was based on the novel by same name by Henryk Sienkiewicz.
It had muskets, and it took place in central/eastern Europe.
Exactly my thought! 🤓
Which novel?
@@anon2034 Edited
@@antonjohansson3819 Thanks!
I have 250 hours in FaS. Great game
This really made made me realize that Movies and TV outside the US arent made for a global audience. You will see Disney push Star Wars every where, but when a film comes out somewhere else with similar quality its not marketed.
Yeah cause most of the world doesnt make movies in a language spoken by over a billion people. Also the us doesnt really make movies for a global audience, its just that most of the western world is used to american media.
@@gvngbvngiggyQuite right. Popular media is American media. But there's room for foreign media to enter the popular sphere, which it does on occasion.
Indie is the way. Bramble: The Mountain King.
Because for many US americans it's all the same. So why should they watch it?
@@lapisinfernalis9052 Thats not as many as you think. We like good shows and movies. We watch media in other languages when they are good, available, and accessible (subtitles).
I definitely agree with your take on the matter. I think the main problem is we (Europeans) do not own any platforms that would help showcase the many European cultures. Just look what they did to Witcher. Despite having Bagiński and Sapkowski on board they fucked it up beyond recognition. Why? Because the production was run by Americans and they wouldn't listen to Poles.
Slight correction Kamilu. It wasn't run by Americans. It was run by jews residing in America. These international multiculti-ralists want to erase white people from reality.
The production wouldn't listen to Americans, either😭. I can't think of anyone in America who played the games and genuinely loved their choices. The discourse here is all about how terribly the showrunners messed it up despite almost everyone involved wanting it to be better. Hollywood is the weirdest corner of America, for sure.
Woke Hollywood doesn't speak for the entirety of America, we're not some monolith.
This is probably one of the reasons why JK Rowling forced Warner Bros. to make the Harry Potter films in the UK with a UK cast.
But it is also because she wanted it to feel authentic. In USA there is no castles and Hogwarts is a castle in which kids learn magic
Agree!! Heck, you could say that about alot of cultures!
I am South Asian and working as a Developer on a new Video Game, inspired by that location! The culture! The Music! Art! Philosophy!
So yea agree! ❤
Especially unique ones like the Witcher 3s Polishness❤
Oh, interesting 🙂 What's it called?
@@FolkWalkCZ Hi there! Sadly not allowed to tell! NDA binding my tongue.. 😅 BUT I can say, ur video helped shape it! We were scared of making it to "Cultural" , no more!!
Thx!! 👍❤️
@@thekage100Then I recommend you Jan Sas Zubrzycki's books
@@karolinakuc4783
Oh thx! Is there one book in particular? Or just in general? ❤️
@@thekage100In general. Most are about architecture and its symbolism
I am an American, but I absolutely love learning about new cultures through media. Especially about the folklore and legends of that culture. I never knew much about Eastern Europe until I lived with a bunch of people from Bulgaria and Romania and Russia in Japan and they taught me about their own home countries, songs, and dances. Hollywood has an issue of just painting over everything with a generic brush and I’d prefer to have more dynamic and rich stories featuring and displaying unique aspects of more cultures, including less represented European cultures.
Had a stupid tought. Why not to make coop channel with people around the world that like you want to spread the awareness of cultures. I think that it would be one of most popular channels on YT in no time.
That's a good idea. I'll keep that in mind, thanks 🙂
I would love to help with this. I don't know how much use I would be considering I'm not tech savvy, but i can write, and I've written and published my own short stories based on goan (local indian) folklore. I'm currently working on an anthology of my own but would love to collab with like minded individuals regardless of monetary gain. I have a day job for that.
This would probably take a lot of resources and investments that a small channel doesn't have. Something like scishow levels of production.
@FolkWalkCZ It might be worth reaching out to Nebula to see how they started their channel since it was created by a group of like-minded creators.
Nebula's a platform, not a channel. They would probably be happy to have the multi-cultural show on their system. @@iarroganti
A better question is why people during communism did a much better job of showing Czech/Moravian culture. The last good fairytale is "Princezna ze mlejna" and that was in 1994. We are so addicted to Western culture that we are losing our own. Our politicians do say "We do belong to the West" I think our elites are ashamed of our culture because isn't Western enough.
They have sort of made a museum for what they killed off in a way. In yugoslavia,romania and hungary they really ended the old ways. I have been raised by elders who were raised pre ww2... and damn they are different. And now we are even more so killing the villages than Caucescau and Rakosi XD
BUT HOW DID IT DO IN THE BOX OFFICE HMM OBWIOUSLY ITS AN INFERIOR PRODUCT IF IT MAKES LESS MONEY NO ?
Western culture is loosing to “western culture”
Bohemian/Moravian*
They try to project a politically correct culture on you. Which is not right by any means. Sure your culture may not always be correct about certain things, but so what? It’s unique and it’s your own so be proud of it. Don’t let the West impose their own way of thinking on you just because you live in Europe. Europe used to be as diverse and vibrant as Asia once, but now it seems you guys are all becoming one in your way of thinking, culture and appearance.
I very much agree about there being an appetite for good representations of various European cultures. While you made the point about Squid Games, Dark was also a popular show on Netflix and it was a German show. I do think certain streaming services allow good crossover- I ended up watching quite a few German period pieces with a relative, and what struck us was how something like a court drama about royalty ended up so much more refreshing to watch because it was about the Austrian court instead of Queen Elizabeth. The fact that Hollywood and US media is getting more and more formulaic and homogenized means that people looking for something interesting could be very receptive to good European media, beyond what Britain produces.
I do think the greatest issue will be subs and dubs. Hopefully the same people who make successful anime dubs can be involved in making good dubs of European content, as that would help broaden the audience a great deal.
A main issue here, is that most of America first and foremost associates anything medieval with nothing but fantasy. They grow up knowing "lord of the rings", but live in a culture and country without any further medieval origin.
They have no folklore or older history infused into their country and daily life.
Which is sad, but understandable in their case.
However, western Europe is more and more "becoming" America.
Mostly having American products in the supermarket, seeing mostly American television, and of course, everything online on the Internet is completely Americanised.
Hence our own culture and traditions are slowly becoming nothing but the American caricature of it.
I can't speak for Central or Eastern Europe, but living in the Netherlands/Germany, I can say it is definitely the case here, with most sources of "traditional folklore" and medieval themed subjects available being directly nothing but American fantasy.
Ridiculous "Viking" tv series etc.
And it's a horrible loss.
That's sad but I think that it's exactly the reason why we need independent creators to make content about their culture.
Europeans now are just Americans with different languages.
I miss old names. In names you can def see the Americanisation. As a Hungarian, compared to 'modern' names I very much prefer older Germanic names with cool meanings, like Sigrún, Sigdrífa or even Wilhelm. Do you know cool older Dutch names?
@@sztallone415 I know what you mean, since my parents gave me an English name as well. In fact, I've recently started to pronounce my name differently at times, because older people seem to find the English one complicated.
Cool older Dutch nemes...
Maybe Lafawijn or Reinhart.
Older Dutch names are often not unlike German ones, like Hans, Karl or Johan.
@@hebanker3372 Maybe you are if you thinking that. I have seen many people yelling USA is bad but then, hey their behaviour was the same at a time. Many young people want a different aproach to life. I know so many peple that are interested in history mostly because of the books and games like KKKD, ESO.
3:14 Czech Communist fantasy movies are some of the best eastern block films. Somehow they have a magic in them that really very few people in the west ever captured.
We don't consider these fantasy movies, these are just fairytales for us. 😀 But what is really crazy are our sci-fi comedy movies, like Zítra vstanu a opařím se čajem where they time travel and one nazi wants to return to WWII and give nuclear bomb to Hitler and then he is arrested by his younger him and he wants to execute himself. 😀 These movies are that crazy that you have to watch it, I can't really explain it and I don't think someone out of Czech Republic would understand this kind of dark humor.
@@PidalinI think Polish SF comedy "Seksmisja" comes close. Am I wrong?
Witcher isn't set in "medieval" times, as the author said multiple times. It's more reminiscent of later renaissance period (of course the mentality of the characters is even more modern)
these periods aren't set in stone, nor they are based on any objective metric
It is not as if one day it was the Medieval period, and the next day, it was the Renaissance. The transition was gradual over more than a century, took several generations. The Medieval period lasted a thousand years, from about 500 to about 1500 A.D. The Renaissance, lasted about 200 years from about 1400 to about 1600 A.D. The difference between the early Middle Ages and the late Middle Ages was much greater than the difference brought upon by the Renaissance. But it happened slowly and gradually, so that the people who lived back than didn't notice it in their daily lives. Also, the cultural difference between different places in Europe was much greater than the cultural difference in time for a given place. When people hear the term "the Renaissance", they almost always think about Italy, around 1500. But even Italy was not a homogeneous place - the culture in Naples was entirely different from the culture in Bologna, Rome, Florence, Milan, or Venice. Not even the language was the same.
So saying "the Witcher isn't set in Medieval times, but is more reminiscent of later Renaissance period" tells you absolutely nothing.
@KresimirYT as you've said, there's quite a region-based difference, including the very understanding of the term. Like, here in Czechia, renaissance is mostly understood as cultural style of late medieval and early modern ages, but it seems to me that especially in the West, the renaissance is understood as period of its own (especially in England where it seems to be basically synonymous for Tudor + early Stuart reign). Not to mention that Italian renaissance started in 14th century when both the Czech lands and England were still very much medieval...
That being said, OP was somewhat right that Witcher with its pikemen and landsknechts really gravitates more towards the end of late middle ages and early modern period than your typical "medieval fantasy". Then again, gunpowder is absent, magic exists, and there are probably quite a few inconsistencies in the technology throughout the story, so who knows...
Both medieval and Renaissance kinda blurry though.
The reason why anime is so popular now is because Japan was willing to export their culture to the west.
The reason anime is popular is that it's catchy, over the top and appeals to kids. Your message is meaningless. What does "Japan was willing to export their culture" even mean? Did they purposefully export it? No, much on the contrary, early on anime outside Japan was living off fan translations and bootleg DVDs. If anything, anime is popular in spite of Japan's indifference to exporting it.
@@AikanaroSauron it became popular for the exact OPPOSITE reasons you mentioned though. Have you compared how "human-like" anime looks like, compared to disney or other actual cartoons from the west? West cartoons are the definition of "over the top" and it is a literal common sense for any animator in the industry. Anime is more human and more "realistic". I don't say it IS realistic, but that it is much MORE realistic than anything western cartoon ever does. Look at characters faces, their gestures, their body's in both, you see how everything west is completely and utterly exaggerated and deformed, while anime is much more "sane" or better said "delicate" with their movements. Western cartoons ONLY appeal to kids, but because of anime NOT being over the top, being *more* realistic and sensible, it appeals to MOST age groups. Also considering how there are a lot of genres, not only Naruto, but something much more "serious" like Attack on Titan for example. And much much more sophisticated genres that west is not ever going to even dream to animate lol. It is just the reality. Of course it would be popular even without wanting to export it, it is usually good enough for people to even want to jump through the hoops to see it.
@@twothreeoneoneseventwoonefour5 Unrelated to the topic, and I'm neither reading all that nor at all interested in arguing with weebs.
@@AikanaroSauron you made a misinformed comment, I corrected it, mr "not arguing with weebs 🤓"
@@twothreeoneoneseventwoonefour5 What "argument"? You clearly don't even understand what my comment was about. Enjoy your cartoons, I don't care, that's not the point.
Europe is so rich in culture and history, it's truly a shame there's a clear misrepresentation of Europe. American Media is for America, which is fine, but the American film industry is one of the richest. The New US Cultural Empire is truly setting up cultural norms all around the world, which is a shame since we don't all need to have the same customs and traditions and stories.
The best representation of other cultures that American media has ever done has always been created by people from said culture, ie Coco, or even Encanto. The thing is that is mainly because there has been a push to create media that features poc. Of course, people of color deserve representation, but so do non-western Europeans. It is not because ppl are white that they have less culture, or that it is somehow evil. Culture is culture, and culture is rich and beautiful!
I will be subbing to learn more folklore!
Love from Canada!
Well but germany/ austria/ switzerland are western or central europe and as a german I think we should also get representation because our culture especially for germany is only mostly portrayed with the N*zi time or maybe medieval sometimes but nobody knows about our actual traditional clothing not even the most germans because we don't even represent them ourselves wich is really saddening. There are a few good ones but they are all old from the 1950s or for example "Die Nibelungen" from the 1920s 😅 I really wish that germans/ austrains and swiss people would get a better understanding from the world but of course we also have to understand the other cultures better it's based on both sides to actually care about the culture from eachother and there is probably a main problem but yeah I would love to see more european movies with their actual culture for example I would really be interested in a movies from romania, sweden, france, the baltics, hungary but in general from all countries 🥰
I read somewhere that part of problem with european representation in US is that americans just dont like subtitles and overal didnt accept other than US versions. For example when there was succesfull swedish movie Let the riht One in, Hollywood just immedieately release US remake. It might be watered down nowdays since, VOD services like Netflix like to buy festival or "foreign" movies, But it is still there.
True. Americans are not interested in European culture unless it is Americanized version of europe. Their understanding of the Middle Ages is often limited to castles, knights and battles, while for Europeans it is tangible history. Most Europeans walk in the middle of that history every day on their way to work. It gives a whole different perspective to it. Cultural history is hard to sell to an audience that is only interested in swords and shiny armors.
same with the french Intouchables, which was made into an american production and german Honig im Kopf which was also remade for the US. i don’t understand it. seems like americans can’t look at something from outside their own country and relate to it. i’m german and most of our productions suck, honestly, but i liked the netflix series Dark at least
I have the feeling that the English speaking countries don't have a very strong dubbing industry, they are acostume to media that it's produce in english. I remmeber than when Squid Game came out I saw a lot of people mocking the english dub. I'm not saying that it's bad to see stuff in the original language, but good dubbing can make a huge diferences when it comes to introducing stuff from different cultures. I'm from Spain and there is certainly some appriciation for the voice actors that dub movies. Not mainstream famous but anyone who is minimally interested in movies nows a couple of them and it's an industry that it's talk about with care and appreciation for the craft. I have not seen something similar in the english countries, and that's an obstacle when it comes to introducing them to non-english media.
@@x-wing8785 Not necessarily. So much of the popular US media is so homogenized that anything slightly different gets attention, and more and more foreign works are getting attention. Squid Games, as the video mentioned, and Parasite were big. Dark on Netflix was also decently popular, and that's a German show.
@@elena3941 >same with the french Intouchables, which was made into an american production and german Honig im Kopf which was also remade for the US. i don’t understand it
This isn't because of US audiences seeing foreign films and going "icky, make it American for us", this is a marketing decision from certain film bigwigs. Foreign language films can and have been extremely successful in the US.
>seems like americans can’t look at something from outside their own country and relate to it
This is utter nonsense to be honest, be better
I am all for Europe becoming more self sufficient. Not just culturally, but also militarily and economically.
one of the problems with europe trying to become an independent power in the world again is the relatively small landmass and depleted resources. the americans can project power and function as a world power in the way they do in part because they have most of a continent's worth of resources.
i just wonder how you would go about that given that historically europe expanded/colonized the rest of the world for resources and that is no longer a real option, how would you become materially independent from the americans without becoming materially independent on others? it doesn't really seem possible in the modern global economy.
@@EPWillard You can never be fully independent but Europe still has a lot of influence in the world. France and the UK still hold sway over their ex-colonies and have good trade relations with these countries.
No thanks, we've seen what it was like when Europeans were in charge, it lead to war and conquest that killed 10's of millions. I'm good.
I like that you avoided the all-too-often repeated 'the US has no culture' or even more broadly 'the West has no culture'. I state that because almost everytime I saw someone interested in European culture, there was an undercurrent of 'mine is better because it's mine' ('Mine' usually boiling down to 'anything before we stopped living in forests'). Very cool video. I'll drop in more often :)
The US has culture but a lot of it is so money based that it’s more of a cash grab. They made all the Christmas movies and lights and presents but it’s a seasonal push for consumerism due to it being very recently made. What other culture makes buying objects so important?
@@FakenameStevens When your ancestors less than two generations removed were living in the little house on the prairie, having any consumer goods is worth celebrating. This abject hatred and dismissal of white American culture is so gauche. Please stop.
@@FakenameStevens oh yeah of course mate nobody every made money marketing aspects of their culture before, not like we've been doing it for thousands of years, this is a borderline reddit take.
@FakenameStevens You are technically correct, but only on that technicality. American culture is not the only one where material objects, which require money, mind you, have a great value. Look to many post-soviet countries or ones with large rural populations - having a car license or a car overall is an important part of growing up, not because 'The Yankees do it' but because it is a genuinely important part of living in conditions where there are large swaths of land to cover.
"The West" doesn't have a culture. Neither does "The East". Or "The South".
I think one of problems and barriers that prevents genuine European cultural depictions from mainstream media is the current zeitgeist- many ppl specially in western half of Europe( but its spreading to East too) a/ dont know actual European history and culture and b/ dont like European history and culture. Thanks to ppl in media, academia and politics whole generation or two grew up believing anything native European is just white racist boring imperialistic monolith thats not worth preserving and only redeeming thing would be to add to it or even replace it with cultures and ppl and food and traditions from other parts of world, preferably having the darkest skin colour available just nothing white.
famous examples would be complaining how Czech game from Hussite wars is too white with not enough ppl of colour or how in recent years theres trend in western TV shows, documentaries etc to portray every famous person from European history by someone of visibly African origin.
Yeah, but people can combat this by creating their own content. There is clearly demand for it.
@@FolkWalkCZ Yeah... but it will get censored by the powers that be.
@@FolkWalkCZIm a dane i dont see a danish culture in like 50 years why not becouse Of immigrants but becouse Of americans cultural pool
@@FolkWalkCZ In France, you can try to do such a thing, but you'll get censored or jailed for it, Wokism is a corruption world wide that have the intention of eradicating us.
Just sounds like you want to rival "Americans" in their manifest destiny thinking and decide what "European" culture looks like. And it looks "Western" with Luxor from Vegas, none of that dirty brown "Latin America" stuff. LATIN, ffs.
As a Polish/Ukrainian, I grew up with Ogniem i mieczem, and generally with the whole trilogy directed by Jerzy Hoffman. These movies were as influential as Star Wars to me, and they deserve worldwide recognition. Thank you for mentioning it.
❤
"Потоп" Ежи Гофмана, як і будь які його фільми це найкращі репрезентації нашої культури 😍
The most recent example of trying to export culture I can think of is Mavka: The Forest Song. And they did translate it into english, though I'm not sure how well it did commercially.
While it's not really a fairy tail, the original play is heavily inspired by folklore.
this video really made me think honestly, i'm very proud of my European/French culture but, i feel like that sadly because of internet i've been deeply Americanized and i must admit that i really feel out of touch with the culture and history of my own country (as a lot of people does sadly) and i think it's a really, really bad thing, especially the fact that it's not just me but a ton of people in France and other Western Europe countries as a whole, since this is exactly how stories and culture get lost in time
i can't wait to check more of your channel i've for some reason always had a love for the little i know of the cultures of central Europe and especially places like Poland or Czech republic
As a Belgian same. I feel like I don't know much of my own culture. I should try to participate more in folklore events
Wow, it's almost like globalization actually globalizes... that's insane. Glad to see Europeans who actually acknowledged how American they've become.
@@somerandommen They only acknowledge it, just like everybody, once Davos lift a finger, everybody stop talking.
As an Englishwoman (NOT British) I feel the same. We are becoming too Americanised and we have people, mostly self-hating Lefty "intellectuals", telling us our culture doesn't exist.
Great channel! I would like you to become the largest English-language channel talking about European culture.
I doubt that this channel would ever become that big but thank you 🙂
@@FolkWalkCZnever doubt yourself!
I would love you forever if you translate the czech fairy tale movies. The czech version of Beauty and the Beast is soooo much better than the yawn inducing remake Disney pulled out.
Europe is a small continent but pretty diverse culturally. The main problem is the funding, and the desire to actually create something interesting which should also have subtitles in english + other main languages. A project like that needs to be popular in Europe first, and then the momentum could be pushed worldwide.
Another problem is: where to start? Which culture of the european nations has the highest probability of becoming popular? I am from Albania myself, we have lots of folktales and yet I am pretty sure no one would care about them.
I don't agree with this. The answer for the funding is simple - get with the times. It's so simple to start a TH-cam channel or present your culture on other social media platforms, grow your audience and after it gets big enough you can either fund your own project or start crowdfunding campaign. Look at how successful Shad from Shadiversity has been with his fantasy books and comic books. Critical Drinker is now doing a movie based on his book. You just need to start representing your culture online. I don't agree that no one would care about folk tales from Albania. Some people told me in the past that Americans won't care about Czech fairy tales and folklore. My channel is proof that they were wrong. People are hungry for unique and interesting things they haven't seen before, you just need to make it available and easily accessible to them. That means presenting it in English on the plaforms where they already are.
Oh, and one more thing. "where to start? Which culture of the european nations has the highest probability of becoming popular?" Who cares? The market will decide that and I don't see a reason why they couldn't be all popular. Every nation can have its own creators who represent their culture. It can become whole genre. As Americans say - a rising tide lifts all boats. So we can support each other as Europeans and fellow enjoyers of culture and folklore.
As a german I agree with that the problem that the desire to actually create something is probably one of the main things. There are of couse always people that are corious about history as for me and therefore I am also interested in the cultures from europe but I think many people from the european countries especially if they are more western or central as for me, they don't really care about their own culture, their traditional clothes and so on and that is really sad but as a german it's also a bit more complicated. But I think that is probably the main problem when it comes to this. If we would make a traditional german/ austrain movie with Trachten and folklore people have to be really or kind of interested to actually watch it but many people probably won't because they are used to the movies/ series from netflix. But I would be interested in a movie about albanian culture since I've known many albanias actually during my school years but it is just the question of how we actually get to this movies because of course I see when netflix puts out new movies but I don't see when for example a new historical movie from albania came out if I didnt escpically searched for it and that is probably a big issue 😕
I'm neither European nor slavic but this video also applies to my own ancestor's culture from Asturias, Spain. Everything we do is always for ourselves as some sort of secret hobby, no wonder our homeland is now seen as some sort of empty rental cabin land
Yes im Portugues and we have the same issue, we keep our traditions secret, too!
Its so wierd, last week i found out about this Celtic Carnaval Fastival in the Village of Podence.
And i as a Portugues was like, how does it come that i have never heard of this Fastival before.
Do you guys also have something simular to the Podence Carnival?
@@sapereaudediogenes7282when I was 20 years-old I went to a Celtic music festival in Ortigueira, Galicia. I'm sure there are many other Celtic festivals in Galicia that I don't know about.
there is a disadvantage in being guided by someone. then you will have to adapt to someone else's culture, someone else's agenda and act to the detriment of your native language. for example, kingdom kam was criticized for the lack of black in the game and he himself did not have the Czech language at the start, which upsets me because I wanted to listen to Czech swearing.
I really respect what the author does, but I really want to hear his native language, because it's the language that I love. if we talk about promotion, then I am in favor of the approach when the finished product is translated into other languages. you do not need to act to your detriment, infringe on your language and culture. for example, in my home country (Russia) there is a lot of good content that is not translated. I am in favor of translating it into all languages of the world, but I am against bending to someone else's culture and agenda. we have to do for ourselves and then share with the world. and not to do it for others, and then be surprised that our culture is dying. this happened in Russia when, in pursuit of the West, we did not notice how we killed our film culture. and now we are taking up our heads and reviving the old Soviet school and trying to fight Westernization.
As a fellow Spaniard and Catalan, I sing for the cultural diversity in Spain and give a shout-out to our regions. Catalonia may have gotten a better rap because of the political climate, but that has come with a lot of power mongering that not everyone agrees with and I'd definitely love to see more of other areas as well.
So - kudos to you, dear northern siblings!
Well, I don't know of any "secret" ones per se, as far as I know you would be able to read about the one my family is most fond of, the Festival of Saint Peter (Fiesta de San Pedro en la Falguera if you are into "proper naming") and La Virgen de la Guía because my fam is from Llanes
As an Australian of English&Celtic Ancestry. It's very hard to engage with the cultures of my ancestors because so much has been misrepresented and just eroded away at through colonisation, I've always hoped to pick up Irish or one of the other Celtic languages of my ancestors and incorporate little things that we might have stopped doing culturally but it's hard you know to get good information that you can trust
Even just in the context of Australia, so much of our culture is being washed due to the dominance of American media. The little differences are starting to disappear and it concerns me. I remember reading this quote once by Woody Guthrie, that southern accents used to sound different before the rise of the 'American country accent' in the 1930s and that they didn't sound like that originally but a decade later that original accent he was talking about was gone and they now sounded like those who spoke in the film. Like caricatures of themselves, which is a scary thought because that only took a decade.
Oh you can sure feel a difference. Overall conclusion from movies from USA is that humanity is measured by ability to communicate and realize its goals. Crocodile Dundee, Storm Boy (1976) and H2O series are about how humanity is measured by creativity and ability to feel.
Thank you for giving a couple of reccomendations of Czech movies, I will definitely watch them. I was about to mention the Ogniem i Mieczem: I believe I have seen it somewhere with English subtitles (maybe even Netflix?) because I have sent a link to my friend abroad. It is actually a well known movie across former PLC countries and even in Russia. The magic thing is: its about our conflicts, and every side of these conflicts loves the movie 😂
I am currently making subtitles to my absolute favourite movie Noce i Dnie (1977) that is 4 hours long. It was nominated for Oscar in a "foreign movie" category and labeled as "Polish Gone with the Wind". Its masterpiece in my eyes and a pill that contains everything that is Polish. The director of this movie is now a lecturer at some American movie-making university.
Interesting 🙂 If you're interested in Czech fairy tales I'll definitely do a video about my favorite ones in the future 😉
@@FolkWalkCZ Everything you're passionate about: I'm sure it will be interesting. The more organic and real the more cool.
Noce i dnie is a masterpiece. For everyone interested I recommend "znachor" as well, all 3 versions (the pre II ww, prl and netflix). For me the sound of meadow is quintesential. If a movie has this sound im in heaven 😂😂😂 pure slavic nostalgia
what is PLC? i guess i lived myself in one of them or nearby, but still cannot decipher.
@@SiiriRebane Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
Promoting European culture is hard, because there is no European platform like Netflix, Amazon or even HBO that would allow to do it on a large scale.
For example "work" of Mr. Bagiński on The Witcher series shows that someone who understands his culture and (I still believe it) could contribute many good ideas, has nothing to say, if the show runner treats him like an advertising puppet. This culture is complicated even for us, and Americans doesn't have the time nor the will to really learn about it.
I wish all the best in your youTube journey.
Ps. I really like the "woven" background, find it really nice and calming. Maybe you could experiment with changing colours to visually signal different topics. Just an idea ;)
And who's fault is that? It's not like Europe doesn't have the capability to do a Netflix or Amazon. It's just that here people seem to have zero interest in it, or the countries can't agree to create a European platform. it's exactly like with the military in some countries. Why bother, the Americans already handle it. There's no drive to have a European counterpart. Transatlantic friendship is one thing but before WW2 Europe had a much more international presence.
Here in America, if you're white and have pride in your heritage, you're deemed a bigot.
Baginsky is a mixed bag. On one hand, he was the one that convinced Sapkowski to give Netflix a shot to create the show. That is an almost impossible task, considering that he despises video games by CDPR, but Tomek somehow did it.
On the other, he frames western audience as social media addicts that don't care about story that makes sense and they only want emotion. In an interview, he literally described it as simplifying of the story for Americans that watch TikTok. Hence why there are so many changes in the show compared to the books.
So I'm not sure what to think about him. I'm mostly angry that he let the show writers do what they did and the explanation for it is just stupid. I feel like he betrayed the fans of the book.
And in no way was he an 'advertising puppet'. Outside of Poland nobody knows about him, except Witcher fans. The real advertising puppet was Henry Cavill.
Netflix is it is relatively easy (for Euros too) to get a show or movie published compared to other publishers.
TH-cam is also viable, like only somewhat recently over the past few years people realized you can put full TV style documentaries on youtube and people will watch it.
@@LeutnantJoker well, they kinda started fighting amongst themselves, decimating their populations and economies, and with the independence of so many colonies, many European countries lost a lot, so that's probably why their international presence has diminished.
When I thought a litter more about it I realized that now European culture has a great chance because we live in dark ages of american entertainment. It's still produced but quality is low so people are searching for something different.
If European productions focus on quality instead of ideology then meaby there will be no need for marketing or external support because people will come themself looking for something good and different from what they see everyday.
Yeah, exactly.
The quality is hard to find these days, though. The older fairytales and movies had better stories, better writers. The dark age of Hollywood / Netflix / western production also comes with bad writing, people are disappointed (Witcher, again). It's a bigger problem than just pushing ideology or being better at marketing. Today everyone think they are good at everything, people can't take criticism and don't feel the need to better themselves and their work. People need to learn how to tell good stories, not just glue random archetypes together. I haven't seen the Princess cursed in time yet, hopefully it's better than your average annual Christmas fairytale 😅
(Good luck with your channel! Subscribe. - older Czech expat lady.)
@@elliesenko5173 The Princess cursed in time is not very good unfortunately. I've seen only the first one and it's sort of a Groundhog Day in a fairy tale setting with wannabe Marvel visual effects. That's why I said that it’s trying to be more of a fantasy inspired by the culture from the West so there’s not much Czech culture left in it and it doesn’t represent actual Czech fairy tales very well. From what I've heard the second one is trying to be even more of a fantasy or "Marvel movie". That's what I hate about this whole thing. Instead of trying to be distinctively Czech even our fairy tales are now trying to be like American pop culture. And those are the more forward-thinking ones which are actually available in English. Most of our other contemporary fairy tales are just dumb infantile comedies with stupid comic relief characters and filmmakers churn them out every year like on a conveyor belt because that's the "tradition". But no one is really going back to romanticism era of classical fairy tales which were often creepy, dark and morbid. I'm convinced that people would love good old fashioned fairy tale in that style. I want to do a video about this subject in the future and my dream is also that I'll some day convince enough people to make such a fairy tale with me. I already know people that would be able to do that but I want to grow this channel first so the audience is bigger and I can get crowdfunding for the fairy tale or I can make enough money to invest in it myself.
For example I think the Greeks should try creating a lot of movies about Greek mythology or even some more modern Greek stuff too, but in any case all of Europe would get addicted to Greek cinema if they actually try and do quality stuff, like the Japanese did
as a Serbian who just stumbled on this video and channel, I gotta say, you are absolutely correct. The historical richness of the Slavic and particularly Eastern European culture is unfortunately still largely unprecedented. But when we look at other cultures that have been able to take the world by storm with their media and fiction that is marketed towards the foreigners, why are we the ones keeping to ourselves? I think we really need to try to maybe create something to capture foreign audiences and allow them to explore our culture, traditions, and customs. Because there are simply many beautiful stories to be told and created that I believe have immense potential. I think there might be a fear or reluctance to do so because perhaps some people feel like they don't want to "ruin" their traditions and customs by exposing them to foreign eyes. Or maybe due to the fact that unfortunately, in order to align with the industry today, your story will be heavily altered and in a way "mellowed" out, unless you are working with like minded people.
Nevertheless, great video! I am glad someone is trying to bring more attention to it. Keep up the good work!
I would love to see a high budget and historically/culturally accurate movie on the Battle of Kosovo. Its unfortunate that the political situation with the US and Serbia would probably never let that happen.
@@ColoradoStreamingDo I know. From Turkey we got Muhtsem Yüzyıl about Sultan Suleyman in which they didn't hesitate to show that jannissaries were brutal and formed from kidnapped boys trained from young age to be a soldier and shown all sorts of violence
Wokism will never allow it.
The problem with Eastern europe.is that Eastern Europeans are treated as the "trash" of Europe and so nobody wants to see their cultural products. The othe problem is Eastern Europeans have an inferiority complex (even though they are superior to Western Europe) and try hard to be friends with Europe rather than reorienting towards Asia where they will be more accepted
@@ColoradoStreaming It would be amazing! But I don't think we should be limited to just historical depictions, even though that was definetly a central theme of this video. I personally believe that the mythology and fiction too is extremely rich. However, socio-economic factors(at least in the Balkans) really can be a discouragement to pursue careers related to creativity. We've got a lot of development to do before we reach a society that fully embraces creativity as part of its industry.
Great content! Thank you very much for your work and the presentation of slavic / european culture!
As a Czech, I am very grateful that someone, even from my country, is talking about this topic and I think that more and more people are slowly realizing that we Europeans have a very rich culture that must be protected at all costs. Not only the folklore or medieval culture aspects, but also the ancient pagan aspects, which of course are followed by later folklore and traditions, are very astonishing and equal to, for example, ancient Egypt or Asian things, which are very well known throughout the world. Good job man!
I know this feeling. I'm Danish and I would love if the Scandinavian countries would put more effort into make historical movies or TV series. but very often when they are given the opportunity to make historical shows. They always end up butchering it. (Looking at you, 1864 Danish TV series. Who puts a freaking ice wizard in a historical TV series?!!!)
Hahaha! Same with Bitwa pod Wiedniem. What on Earth made Italian director think that putting a monk turning into a wolf was a good idea? Accept for bad CGI and said monk I'd say it's a good movie.
Mate i agree 110%, as Swede the only good medival movie we got that was kinda good in last 20 years on the top of my head was Arn Tempel Riddaren
I agree. / a swede
Thing is.... you danes are the best ones of all of scandinavia in making movies. Kinda hoping on you guys T_T
as a dane you’re absolutely right i’d love to see some historical danish shows or even some accurate retellings of h c anderson’s stories
I wholeheartedly agree, Ive started working on a book series/franchise that takes place in the united kingdom and I really wanna include/combine some mythological creatures from czech
one of the stories I wanna write will heavily focus on this, with a witch that is basically polednice and vodník combined
the explanation for why these appear more around the world is because theyre ghosts (in my lore I mean), hense why in this story vodník is actually a woman
As a German, it hurts my soul to see how a lack of culture our people often attribute themselves to. We recently argued at our school whether we should do a culture day this year, and all the German students said "And what would I be supposed to wear? Dirndl and Lederhosen?"
Please, we are NORTHERN GERMAN. Bavaria's culture is completely different from ours, and if you took like ten seconds to look up "Nothern German traditional costumes" or "Frisian costumes" you would quickly realize that there are dozens of different cultural attires that most *German* people nowadays are completely unaware of. And most of them don't even look like Dirndl or Lederhosen, they look a lot more similar to many Eastern European costumes.
It really hurts seeing this, and the fact that social media toxicity is making German teens, European people, feel like we are like "American white people that have no culture" (which btw. isn't even true either, *everybody* has culture) is making this even worse lately. How come that an entire country, thanks to *foreign* stereotypes, completely forgot their cultural heritage? It's no wonder that we are bad at representing our culture, if we completely forgot it exists.
As a south gernam from Baden Württemberg I fully understand you, it is also quite sad to see. I would love to see more representation of our traditional clothes not only from Bavaria but for me here for example especially the Trachten from Blach Forest/ Schwarzwald. There is one beautiful movie and one of my favourite movies wich is called "Das Kalte Herz" from the 1950s and it plays in the black forest region but it in this movie you can beautifully see the culture fron this region 🤍
A big problem is accessibility. I looked up With Fire and Sword after learning Hellish Quart was based off it, only to find that there were no translations available. I can't learn an entire language every time I find a foreign story I'm interested in, it's just not feasible.
This also applies to non-European and even some Western media. There's this Spanish series I enjoyed called Aguila Roja (Red Eagle), and while I'm fluent in the language, I haven't been able to find any place I can watch the series in its entirety: not legally and not even in the pirate networks. I haven't found any hard copies for the complete series either. There are also some Brazilian dramas I grew up with that aren't available at all through streaming or physical, even though I _know_ there are Spanish dubs because those are what I watched-and I don't think they even have any English translations. It's kind of frustrating, like when you're desperately searching for a piece of lost media.
I think the most important step is to make these works more easily accessible to a broader market.
Yeah, exactly.
About Brazilian média the culprit is the Globo Group (the major Brazilian media enterprise). They decided to have their own streaming service GloboPlay so they don’t license their content to other streamings even though GloboPlay isn’t lucrative. I’m not subscribed to GloboPlay so I don’t know if they translate their dramas to English, Spanish or other languages, but if you’re interested you should check out if it attends to your needs.
I'm glad that I found your channel. There are lots of rich cultures and history in the world with a lot potential from every corner of the world.
I'm sick of Hollywood and Disney remaking and retelling the same story over and over again. I want a story which is rarely exposed, or even translated for the international release of movies and books.
Plus the representation of people outside the white European. They don't need to replace a European as African, and we can see local folklore or history from great persons from said geography and demography. Hence prevented the cultural war we have today.
It has never been easy to enter market in USA. It hasn't been since time of Hays code. Having considered how monopolized by big brands it is I do not expect creative ideas or good quality from them
First of all, really appreciate your channel! The Witcher 3 game introduced me to Polish/Czech/Middle European culture and folklore. I have since read the first two books, and is working my way towards the later books in the series. As I read more, I really want to dig deeper into the folklore behind the stories but couldn't find many good resources, at least not in English. What you are going opens a window for us willing to learn, so thank you! Secondly, I just want to mention that I absolutely agree with your point of "If you leave it to Hollywood, they will butcher it." What I'm about to say is my own opinion, sorry in advance if it's a bit harsh. As a Chinese, I have major issues with American film industry's unfair depiction of our culture. But I guess it is done by choice, as they don't want to represent us in positive images. It surprise me that European culture suffers from American arrogance as well. And that makes me want to see more qualitied representations of cultures done by the people who love and appreciate them.
i feel the same about representation of germans as a german. it kinda sucks we’re either evil or comic relief with an accent…
As an American I can say that isn’t entirely true. There’s a guy in my state of pa who translated the whole of njals saga in English. Where there, it’s just most of us don’t have a budget….and the woke are constantly dangling a sword over are heads. I’d myself would so make a fantasy Europe if I had the budget.
Yeah.. I mostly stopped watching American productions because they were getting repetitive (Americans save the "world" - the US - from either aliens, natural disasters or other nations) or insulting as usual (German Nazi*, Russian Mafia, "Arabian" bo**ers... they do this to every country unless they want to romanticize those, like falling in love with an Italian man etc.).
This is why I love the author Naomi Novik. Her book Uprooted really connected me to what it would look like to have modern fantasy influenced by Polish culture. We need more like that!
1:21 this statement here is exactly what I’m doing, I enjoy mythology and folklore from all over the world but being English I’m especially interested in those closer to home, Celtic myths and stuff are great and Beowulf is fantastic but I’m most interested in King Arthur, it’s a very fascinating literary tradition, I also despise modern historical romance, so I decided I was going to write my own chivalric romance in verse, free verse not alliterative verse because I’m not practiced enough to do so currently.
Some Norwegian films/TV series are making breakthroughs on this front. Ragnarok is a decent TV series and it was filmed in Norwegian and is also subtitled + dubbed in numerous languages. Make good stories available to people in a language they understand and market it to them, then they'll watch.
Some of our (Czech) fairytale movies are known in other European countries, often because they were coproduced there. (IIRC Tři Oříšky Pro Popelku is quite famous in Germany and maybe some of the Scandinavian countries?)
And some of our classic movies have been released in English on bluray, most recently "Adéla ještě nevečeřela" and "Tajemství hradu v Karpatech" by a boutique company called Deaf Crocodile.
Popelka is huge in Norway and it's a part of their Christmas as well.
I'm from Ukraine and Try Oříšky seems to be pretty known here. I haven't seen it, but heard it's name several times from different people.
Tři oříšky is huge in (the german part of) Switzerland, people absolutely love it here and when Libuška Šafránková died, it was in the newspapers. 💙
Agreed, Czech fairy tale films are very well made.
Yeah as a child from germany I watched manyyy czech fairytales 🥰
Thumbs up for Fire and sword. I got along ago on VHS tape.
Czech, Polish and Italian old movies/fairy tails were the beeest back in the day, they exported them to other slavs in the Balkans with dubbing. This needs to be resurrected.
Glad you mentioned KCD. Damn I sank some hours into that game, and it's a great example of precisely what you're talking about. Hell I've never been to Czechia, but I recognised Pirkstein instantly in this video, and it put that whole area on the map for me.
It's great that if you go onto Google Maps and zoom in to places like Rataje, there are clear references to the game. Rattay Tourney is marked for instance, with review comments like "I love coming here to watch Black Peter best the locals! Well worth the Groshen."
Go up to Uzice and there are review comments on the church there referencing Father Godwin getting drunk. There's loads of little references that users have put on there, and pretty much any place that featured prominently in the game has some gamer comments to the real life place on maps.
It made an impact on people, and they tuned in to Czech history, and they enjoyed it. I sure know I did.
My time in Prague, Kolin & Pilsen, made my heart hurt, like I was fixed on a painting of the past. Longing for a world that no longer exists, knowing it could be better.
We should celebrate the cultures but we shouldn't pretend like those were some better times, we have to also remember how bad it was for people then, the reason those old stories had so much heart is exactly because how hard the life then was and if we just pretend that it was all sunshine and rainbows we remove depth from it. Nobody should want to live in the past but everyone should know and respect it.
I'm so glad that yt recommended this video to me. Im Polish and while we were on a holiday with my family in Spain. There were bunch of people in folk outfits playing music and dancing on the street. Me and my dad looked at each other and went "damn, why we can't do that in Poland? We have beautiful culture here too!". Your video really speaks to me. I dont like globalization, It makes everything the same and boring. We really should celebrate our cultures. Anyway, you have my subscription hope to see more videos :)
you have lots of people in Poland who keep traditions alive. You just haven't come across them yet. Shouldn't be too difficult, though. google for traditional music, dances or dresses in Poland and get into it instead of complaining.
Bruh it's already present in Poland. Like Lipka Zielona, etc. Meanwhile in stateless nations of France like Alsace, Provence, Nice, Gascony, Savoy, it actually is almost non existent.
@@gamermapper bullshit there is lots of indigenous traditional music, dancing and folklore in those regions of France. you just have to go look for it in the right places. maybe try a festival such as Le Son Continu or some folk dance workshops
I couldn't agree more with this video (so glad I got it in recommended) it echoes my thoughts perfectly. I'm from Bulgaria and I do have vids about Korea on my channel because thats what i studied about in uni but it's been tremendous amount of fun to sneak in there stories of Bulgarian folk tales and traditions as well. It really feels like it's up to the individual to popularize their culture, cuz as you said our countries are falling into the trend of copying America which is very unfortunate. But I'm hopeful things will get better. And you keep up the great work!
YES PLEASE! I know sod all about most European folklore except the obvious bits or those that inspired something like Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter.
I'm still waiting for English translation of Meekhan (Robert M. Wegner) and The Snake Theater (Agnieszka Hałas). Those are best Polish fantasy books I found recently.
Wait, Meekhan is Polish..?
I only learned about the rich Finnish culture this summer. It is different from other Nordic myths and cultures.
And 100% agree that most African countries need to step up their game too. It is hard to find their folklore and Hollywood doesn't represent them either.
I give my pov as an italian: there has always been a struggle in italy between the preservation of regional cultures, omologation to the italian identity and to the foreign us-imported and now the very prevalent japanese culture. There are a lot of regional things we preserve that deserve more cultural recognition and i wonder where lies the right balance in the blend of theese three (regional, national and international) layers.
As an American, I love this so much and heartily agree! I would love to discover films and shows about different cultural folklore. In my elementary school we had a Russian teacher who taught us the alphabet and counting, and also described the culture and showed us documentaries, traditional costumes, and folklore. There was even a Russian dance club! To this day I still remember some of the Baba Yaga stories he read to us and I think it made me more excited to hear different stories and tales from around the world.
I would note that, while English translations do increase visibility, my husband and I love watching studio Ghibli and other foreign films in their original language, as it retains the actors' intonation as well as a [usually] more literal translation. I would be equally interested in watching films from anywhere in the world with subtitles instead of an English dub.
Great video! This does not just apply for great local folklore, but European history in general. I still can't get my head around the fact that there is still no good film or show about the French Revolution, except for the ones made by the French, or the Russian Revolution/Civil War, again except for the Russian ones.
As a Dutchie, I can say there is enough in our history books for a Game of Thrones-like show, though I understand its difficult for a Hollywood screenwriter to learn about these things when unfamiliar with the language. We should export more!
This video strikes a chord within me. I love history, folklore and traditions and have been blessed to be born in a country that's so rich an diverse, being at the crossroads of western europe (france). We carry the roots of germanic nations latin nations, celtic nations. Ask you average frenchmen where he's from and if he knows anything about his region of origin, you'll get nothing, zilch. In fact id be surprised if the person actually remembered the classics he's been taught in school (at least if they are). We're surrounded in history yet the average man is more interested in "exotic" cultures like japan or africa then their own traditions and there's nothing our government does to help, quite the opposite.
Its really saddening.
I've never heard of any of the movies you mentioned but I find them all really fascinating and will be checking them out!
I really want to see more explanations of slavic mythology and food or reactions to the mentions in Ilona Andrews books, well in the Kate Daniels series. They obviously reinvent as they write to fit the setting (urban fantasy, magic has returned but not always and belief has power so kind of post apocalypse romance with reasons to have all of the folklore from every migrant group) but there are a lot of references and some just have no English explanation.
They're getting better at providing links but omg, like this confrontation from the Magic Stars novella "....“He’s lost,” Adams mocked. “He’s young and single. He can’t resist a letavitsa. That right there is unmatched power. A single one can empty a city of every man in it.”... .... "The fallen star will feed on him and drain him dry.". Obviously I can infer and there is a description but I wanted more info or stories about the letavitsa and all I found was weird video game art.
The weekly chapters on Ilona Andrews blog have links and pictures but the main character for this novella, the Roman Serial, is an American Russian volv, a priest who serves Chernobog and his home is being targeted by neoviking mercenaries (they've used nithing poles faced to his house to try to negate Chernobog's curses so its settting up to be Norwegian vs Russian folklore battle: siegecraft edition).
Other references:
- obryad
- Morena's sacred animal
- Lihoradka
- Sbiten
- paskudnik
- nechist
- the gruelling field, the twilight forest, the evening woods, the winter cathedral
- Burlak, a barge puller??
Mostly I want to know why he has to drag a tree and I'm impatient but I feel like there is a fair amount of folklore and I don't know where to see discussions or reactions.
Ilona Andrews is a husband and wife writing team that are slowly breaking away from doing contract work, she is from Russia and he's American and I think they're both massive nerds who really refine ideas until they can be expressed in fewer words but omg. I'm glad theyre focusing on the story but I would like to know about these myths, legends, traditions and foods.
As a Romanian I agree with this completely. I actually think we're probably amongst the worst people in Europe doing this. The Romanian filming industry and even more the gaming one are extremely poor, we basically consume almost every piece of media from whatever comes from the United States. This has even caused Romanians to use a lot of slang in English and use many English words, like they'd rather use the English word ''job'' instead of the Romanian one ''munca'', and this happens with many words as well. What you mentioned about the interview show made me remember when we literally copied and paste an American singing show ''The Four'' - no originality whatsoever. I think literature is probably the only good thing we have, there's many genres and many books illustriating Romanian culture, way of life, humour, etc yet most people don't read unfortunately.
By the way, had to add. The only ''cultural export'' that Romanians for some reason keep wanting to export is the whole Dracula and vampires thing, which is not even our thing as the original novel was written by an Irish writer. We could talk about doing books, games or movies about Vlad the Impaler for example, but no, Romanians keep spreading the whole ''Dracula'' shit. Even foreigners have done movies about him yet we don't (last ones were doing Communist times).
as a romanian I hate the vampire shit, especially when Vlad was such a fuckin interesting ruler (wether you like him or not) and we also had other amazing rulers (Mihai, Stefan, Cuza), but at the same time I am glad that holywood don't adapt any of them, because you know they will add random black people and somehow make the ottomans the benevolent heroes, cuz white man bad.
Northern Transylvanian myself, can barely stand vampire jokes when talking to strangers online, even if they're just jokes. Honestly as a way of escapism from all the shit of today, I began personifying various places in Romania, because it 'forces' me to look more deeply into the history, culture and traditions and allows me to compile information I learn in a fun way. Would probably not end up posting it though, I just know I'd be called a conservative caveman who only draws white people and I didn't portray them as modern city douchebags either (I'm not conservative, I just like our roots and want to learn more stuff)
Pe mine nu mă deranjează când văd străini spunând că suntem vampiri (pentru că consider că stereotipurile ăstea de vampiri și de Dracula sunt măcar mai bune decât stereotipurile de țigani, hoți și cerșetori), dar mă deranjează când văd românii înșiși spunând asta. Cred că am văzut deja două videoclipuri pe TH-cam în care, într-o atmosferă internațională unde un american trebuia să ghicească ce limbă vorbea o persoană respectivă și altul diferit dar cu o idee similară unde tot un american trebuia să ghicească de unde era o persoană respectivă; cei doi români care au apărut (fiind rar ca România să apară în acest tip de videoclipuri) au trebuit să menționeze că vin din țara lui Dracula sau că țara lor au un personaj popular (referindu-se la Dracula). Ce e amuzant, e că americanii nici nu știau că Dracula vinea din România fiindcă ei asociază Dracula cu Transilvania, și ei cred că locul ăsta nu există fiindcă cred că e fictiv (ca și cum Narnia de exemplu). @@pidge3193
Păi de ce să așteptăm pe Hollywood sau pe străini în general să facă filme despre istoria noastră, nu mai bine le facem noi și, cum a zis omul ăsta în acest videoclip, le exportăm ca să vadă lumea cultura și istoria noastră?@@malighos
Wait could you recommend some of the books :O I'd read them!
I'm a huge KCD fan from Finland and planning to visit Czech Republic because of the game. I'm a huge medieval nerd so even before that I've always wanted to visit many medieval castles but if the game didn't exist I would have never heard of these places. We don't have many castles left here in Finland so it's awesome to find out about places that have stood time :)
My cousin does concept art for Warhorse 🙂 Also, I want to start doing videos about our castles so that's something you might look forward to in the future hopefully 😉
@@FolkWalkCZ That's so cool!
I definitely would watch those kind of videos!
American here. I love learning about and experiencing parts of other cultures, especially ones I have never heard of or am not familiar with. Stuff like KCD is awesome.
Polish searies 1670 gives me a lot of hope, i watched it with my husband (hes from usa) and he enjoyed it a lot even if i had to explain a few aspects. He also loved With fire and with sword because of subtitles
Yeah, I loved 1670 as well 🙂 I want to do a video about it at some point.
I think most people involved in creating entertainment like films, games, music etc are primarily concerned with making profit, not with exporting culture. When you look at it from perspective of making money, creating for the international audience is a very risky strategy. Not that it can't work, just that it has many more pitfalls and financial risks than creating for domestic audiences. Therefore usually the only people who attempt it are few enthusiasts who care deeply about what they are creating and want it to reach the widest audiences. I think both CD Project Red and Warhorse can be counted among these people and unless we have more people like that, culture exports of this sort are likely to be rare.
I’m from the US And I agree, people should definitely “create the culture”. Participated in it, teach your children, take pride in it. Someone on social media that I think does a good job at representing Hungarian culture is Anna “the pretty Shepherd” here on, TH-cam, Instagram and TikTok. I find learning about all sorts of countries different cultures so interesting . and I think a big reason for that is because American culture is so normal that anything different is interesting and eye catching. And I, too, am also obsessed with folklore, and I find it so fascinating because it’s almost like a glimpse into our ancestors way of thinking, which can be so different from our own, yet at the same time so similar. I don’t know it’s hard to explain. Lol.
American here, and I wholeheartedly agree! I’m a huge fan of worldbuilding and hope to write my own stories someday. My favorite part of world building is learning about new cultures and their history and folktales, and applying it to my stories. Ex: we have tons of medival England stories, but not many of medival Germany, or France, or Austria, etc. I want to right those kinds of stories!
Thanks for talking about this! Those movies you suggested look really great, and I would watch them if there were subtitles available! Also being from a tiny European country that has basically erased much of what is unique about its culture, I feel I need to learn more about it myself so I can properly represent it to others. You've inspired me to do so!
Thank you for another great video.
I think that Poland, as well as some other countries of the former Eastern Bloc, still has post soviet complexes and still believes that the West does everything better. This belief has developed in us over the years of living in poverty behind the Iron Curtain and to this day it distorts how we view and evaluate ourselves. It's time for that to change. The US has nothing new to offer at this point and they certainly don't care about actual representation of other cultures. But the rest of the world, including Central and Eastern Europe, has a whole lot of interesting stories to offer, with a solid, authentic cultural foundation, which are much more interesting than what Hollywood produces nowadays.
Very much so. I visited Poland for 18 months a short while ago, partly because I was going to Gdansk which is the orginal Novigrad and of course also connected to my own history as a German. The only thing people constantly asked me was "why on earth would you want to come here, everything here is shit"... which is ironic because in many ways Poland is by now WAY ahead of Germany. People just don't see that yet and have a really bad opinion of their own country.
@@LeutnantJoker I am saddened by this attitude, because Poland has undergone enormous changes in the last 30 years and, thanks to the hard work of its citizens and partly the EU's help as well, it has managed to cach up to the modern standards really fast. Nevertheless, this inferiority complex and the need to adapt and blend into Western society are still strong in this country.
On the bright side recently there has been a certain return to our cultural motifs, but of course filtered through the lens of modern times. Recently, for example, such productions as the film 'Peasants' or the Netflix series '1670' have been released and they were received really well. There has also been a lot of interest in folk music since the famous soubdtrack from The Witcher 3. So there is some hope I guess. I'm just not sure if the motivation is strong enough to break into mainstream 😉
the Soviet Union did a lot to keep folklore alive though, more than a lot of western Europe!
You should do a video on With Fire and Sword! I've got the ebook. I've never read it but I'll remedy that.
I might 🙂
Italy has a lot of culture but the last great movie that tried to tackle its medieval times that would appeal to a mass audience I can think of was L'Armata Brancaleone. One of the big issues is that producers and mass audiences here still seem to despise all genres of fiction that aren't contemporary. Literally the only things that get promoted are police procedurals, romances and comedies for the mass audiences and serious period dramas for the intellectual ones.
And it's soooo goddamn myopic.
That's similar here. But I think that it's slowly changing because of internet.
There was a Polish-Italian coproduction "Bitwa pod Wiedniem". Scenario wise it was very good I think. Just CGI was crappy and there was a scene with a monk turning into a wolf but apart from that it was a fine movie.
I think ours Is a strange case: Italy has had so much cultural impact on the west that i genuinely struggle to figure out what even Is our culture and what Is foreign addittions.
In general i noticed conflict in our fiction tends to have a lot more nuance and be more down to earth, but without beeing preachy either, moreso just having a realist view of things.
(Nature Is usually a positive thing but also Dangerous and brutal, for example).
Other than that i genuinely couldn't tell you that much about our culture that doesn't also apply to most other western countries Aside from some folklore like the Benandanti or the Libri del Comando, wich Is unfortunate to say the least
l’ho notato anche io. di recente ho visto “la chimera”, un film che praticamente nessuno ha visto e che si merita molto di più, ma non passo una settimana senza sentir parlare di mare fuori che onestamente non trovo paragonabile a la chimera, che presenta paesaggi toscani ed arte etrusca - per non parlare del messaggio che dà al pubblico -, perché è una battaglia persa.
i liked the movie the leopard(the one about the risorgimento) but i am a person who seeks that stuff out.
I'm Brazilian and I'm absolutely obsessed with the Czech Republic, specifically. Its culture and history fascinate me. I dream of visiting and even living there someday. TH-cam recommended me this video, and I was totally surprised to find out it was from a Czech guy. Caught me off guard! 🤣
Let me know if you'll ever visit 🙂 We could grab a beer 😉
@@FolkWalkCZ Yeeeeah, for sure 😎👌🏼
I think well crafted media piece (book, game, movie, etc.) based on specific folklore is the best advertisement a region can have. I'm one of examples: I visited Prague because of the vampire battle royale game. The map was really cool and I had good time playing, so I decided to see these streets personally. I was not dissapointed.
I think one of the problems is that a lot of people take inspiration from the internet culture and trends, and not from around in real life. It's sometimes really hard to look for something unique to be inspired by if you're not specific and serious about looking for it.
I live in Australia and love reading or watching cultural videos/movies. I looked up all the movies you showed on TH-cam and found most of them, yet to see if there are sub-titles or not. I'll definitely watch them if there are.
This is one of my main goals as the creator. I am Russian, and it saddens me to see how the Empire, the Soviets and now the modern government either distorted folk culture for their political gain, banned it, or destroyed altogether. I really wish to be able one day create something that represents it in the most authentic way.
Soyuz Multfilm did some really good works such as "O Miyortvey Stare Tsarevnie i siedmiyu Boyarah", Scarlett Flower (1952). Plus their Snow Queen (adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale was great) gave Hayao Miyazaki hope for future of animation
@@karolinakuc4783russians also made a great docu-film about Napoleon in 1970 that is 5 times better than Ridley Scott's Napoleon.
You want folk culture go to Ukraine and put on your vishivanka 🤪
I hope you can save yours. We Germans could not for the most part. For example: There are a lot of traditional garments or dances from diffferent areas of the country, but almost all are unknown by most people nowadays, because they were fogotten due to the Nazi Regime.
@@lucadibattista4864 that movie is fantastic.
coming from a slavic country myself, and sharing multiple cultural similarities, i was so mad how they butchered the witcher tv show. the games were made by a studio who loves and appreciates the culture, and not only slavic, but european in general. its a shame it ended up like that but lets hope someone does something good in the future.
but i agree, considering how complex europe is, we should really be representing our culture a lot more...
Completely agreed. As an American, I have always been fascinated with world culture in general, and it seems like every other week, I hear about some book or comic or movie or whatever from another part of the world, and I'm like 'HELL YEAH, that sounds awesome!', and I try to find a copy in English, and no dice.
I mean, sure; I love my own country's culture, too (and there's plenty of IT that I wish got more exposure, as well), but there is SO MUCH cool stuff out there that just never reaches our shores except as factoids on the internet. Either it's not available in English at all, or it was translated once, decades ago, and now everyone's forgotten about it, or it's available, sure, if you jump through a dozen hoops and spend a lot of money to get it. And it doesn't make sense, because so often when it DOES reach us, it becomes insanely popular - look at the Witcher, as you mentioned; look at the Scandinavian stuff like the Moomins and Pippi Longstocking; hell, look at ANIME, for fuck's sake. American pop culture has been stagnating for years, and yet it still gets exported all over the place; we NEED an influx of fresh blood, fresh influences and perspectives and inspirations. Maybe if we knew more about what other cultures thought and felt and imagined, we'd actually start having fresh ideas ourselves.
Well said 🙂
Well, we happen to share similar obsessions in this regard. Cool stuff is the universal language.@@FolkWalkCZ
Well there are seen small steps in importing European culture abroad. Look up 'The Peasants' (2023), it is a animated movie based on nobel-prize winning Polish novel.
Yeah, I've seen it in theatre. It was great and had exactly the rustic atmosphere I'm going for with my channel 🙂 I love the soundtrack ❤️
As a Pole, I'm not a fan of this movie. It doesn't represent Polish culture accurately. It also highly deviates from the novel (which is not always a bad thing, but in this case I feel like a realistic and complex story has been turned into an unrealistic cheesy romance).
@@meridaskywalker7816yeah, i agree, but they could't do better because the film would be to long. All the complex plot could not fit in one film. i think that it's made as good as it could be done
@@JanJan-kt3ys There is a stage musical based on the same book that was only a bit longer than the movie and it did a better job with shortening the plot. I don't think adapting the book from the point of view of one of the main characters was a good idea.
It is a phenomenon that can be observed almost everywhere in Europe: wanting to refer to the context in which i live, the Italian one, i must say that the last time i saw an attempt at cultural representation linked to tradition was with The Last King, film where the story of Romulus and Remus was retraced without mythological connotations and with a speech that tried to restore the Etruscan-Latin language to the one they would have spoken in the eighth-seventh century BC.
A film that many people have seen, other than fans of historical reconstructions?
The fact is that currently the representations that most suit the fashions of the moment dominate, but if you try to propose something linked to your own cultural background (with its pros and cons), the alarm immediately goes on.
The Italian panorama, even just remaining in the history preceding the 20th century, would be an excellent terrain for myriads of television series and films: although there are novelists who have approached historical reconstruction (I am thinking of Valerio Massimo Manfredi, or Andrea Frediani, and others which I don't remember), the productions (almost) always point to the period 1922-1945, if we talk about past contexts.
Of course, every now and then productions come out that point to the medieval period, but with farcical connotations... and, to be honest, i would be a little tired of seeing Italian productions also dedicated to streaming platforms that don't make the slightest step forward in the direction of dramatic and well-scripted stories.
I launch the input: what wouldn't be a series set in northern Italy, in the period of Lombard domination, narrated in a similar way to Game of Thrones? With intrigues, dynastic ties, pitched wars for power. The factions at play face each other with battles and betrayals: from the Franks of Charlemagne to the Papacy, to the court of Agilulf up to the Byzantine interference....
It's so sad to see how this impacts people as well. I've known people who spoke better English than Dutch, there's no personality in the way young people speak anymore (at least over here). Americanisation was a huge mistake.
Wonderful video! I really agree with a lot of your points. I was born in the U.S but I also have Hungarian citizenship and I have been living in Hungary for 2 years now. I've always wished that more Hungarian folk, historical, and literary culture was more well-known around the world. A lot of Hungarians think its too esoteric or not interesting enough to warrant being spread around the world, but I strongly disagree with this. Nowadays it seems like there can be an audience for everything, and actually I've noticed a lot of videos here on youtube being made about Hungary by non-Hungarians that are getting good attention. It's amazing and wonderful they are making them, but it would be nice to get some local input as well made by Hungarians. I feel I can add to this interest-pool as I am Hungarian as well, and I've grown up with some of the culture and I have also learned some of it as well in my young adult life. I was even thinking of making some youtube videos about Hungarian literature and what books are available in English some time soon. Anyway, I look forward to discovering your channel! It seems right up my alley!
I think that the EU should have an agency focused on Cinema, with its own specific studios (probably Cinecittà in Roma aka the biggest studios in Europe) and policies to create a proper european cinema. This way we could compete with american movies, and promote and share our own culture without Americans constantly misrepresenting it and reducing it to ridiculous stereotypes from the 1930's. As an Italian, watching hollywood movies featuring italians is just painful to watch...italian characters are always played by people who clearly dont speak italian and know basically nothing about italy, and they behave in this weird way that seems like a mock of 1920 southern italians from rural villages.
That's a good idea as a concept but anything made by EU would be even more woke than Hollywood so I don't see this as a viable path forward. It's up to independent creators from different European countries to represent their culture as best as they can.
@@FolkWalkCZ yeah but that would push the problem onwards...as individual countries -let alone small, independent directors - dont have the money to make proper international works.
@@DavideGobbicchiEU funded Unicorn Wars (good adult cartoon by Spanish cartoon by Alberto Vasquez)
@@DavideGobbicchi I don't know. I think that times are changing because of the internet, social media and now even AI. I think that it's possible that soon even individuals will be able to compete with Hollywood which is failing harder and harder.
I believe you are Czech same as me. This, representing our culture and our identity as a whole is one of the biggest problems of our country. I feel like the past has given us such a hard time finding our own way and therefore we have troubles finding our identity, being proud of our country and culture. We always just try to prove ourselves that we are a modern country and that we are far away from our communistic past. Which is great, but if there is one think I really dont like about Czechia, it is the lack of identity. Hope it changes.
Yeah, Europe should make more media representing our culture.
I was playing the game Blasphemous and you can really feel Spanish culture in the game instead of typical Medieval fantasy.
Cheers from Portugal!
Yeah, I loved Blasphemous. That's exactly what I would love to see more of 🙂
Italian here, even though I didn't played it, I saw some lore-videos about it and I was amazed by the cultural references. (hell, I even noticed a Francisco de Goya reference in the Great Preceptor boss fight)
There is lack of modern media products. Kingdom come is great example of successful product about European history, we need more like this.
Anime took a lot of references from Europe but Europe cartoon studios can't compete with them on global market, don't know why
Thaumaturge is a good game from 11bit studio set in Warsaw at the beginning of 20th century
I totally agree with you and that is why I work as a literary translator for Hungarian authors. Also, I write in English as well, not just in Hungarian when it comes to my works. These are small steps, but we are getting there.
That's good to hear 🙂
Angloids will talk about "we have no culture" despite our centuries of literary and musical endeavours from the ancient tales of King Arthur and works of Geoffrey Chaucer to the influences Lord Byron and Tolkien has on modern media as a whole, all written in English, the most spoken second language in the world, the potential here is incredible, but now the most widely appreciated adaptation of English folklore are the deeply sanitised and highly profitable versions from the American Disney studio in the 1930s and 40s. We should be at least teaching our kids the original fairytales these films are based on and not leaving that up to the Americans.
And don't forget Tennyson's poetry. They made cameo in game series Mass Effect
Everyone who says England has no culture is a communist or a jewish puppet.
It honestly upsets me that our own culture is being wiped away for the mind virus that is "diversity and inclusion". Anne Boleyn, Queen Charlotte and Merlin were not black!
@@peachesandcream8753 Globalization does that to every culture, I think. Memnon, Moses, Jesus, and Imhotep weren't white and Aladdin wasn't Indian but they're portrayed that way in Hollywood. And we can even go back to Renaissance art and see how all the Afroasiatic Israelites and Christians, from Abraham to St. Augustine, were portrayed as white. Sometimes it's imperialistic historical revisionism but sometimes it's just plain ignorance.
@@MiguelDLewis Jesus was white, he was a Jew and was of Caucasian decent, he was also described by the Romans as having blonde hair, and so was Moses. Memnon was known for being Ethiopian (African), so where has he ever been portrayed as white?
I think each of us needs to dive deeper into our own folklore before the rest of the world can appreciate it. I'm British and I admit I don't know nearly enough about the Arthurian Legends, or Celtic folklore. We should make an effort to immerse ourselves in our own culture and then demonstrate it's greatness to others, including our children
As an American with mainly German ancestry, I'm only now trying to learn more about my roots that I'm far removed from. I have no idea what it's like to live with deep set culture! No traditional foods or activities or community or anything. It feels hollow. I so hope I can visit these other parts of the world some day! But maybe seeing more media from these places would help fill that gap in the meantime
If you would be interested I recommend following this guy. He covers mainly creatures from German folklore. facebook.com/ForgottenCreaturesDE
What really opened my eyes was when I started doing day-hikes out beyond where I live in Berlin, working my way southward toward the Czech border, or up on the Baltic Sea coast on the island of Rügen. Toward Czechia you cross into a native Germano-Slavic region (the Sorbians, who speak their own Slavic language in the area around Cottbus), and on Rügen you see all kinds of Scandinavian, Slavic, and Baltic influence. It's fascinating, and such a much richer cultural landscape than what we're taught.
Thanks so much for bringing attention to this. I really hope we can work our way back someday to having such a diverse culture in Europe, because it's so much more interesting than the Hollywood version.
This earned you a sub. I've always been a bit of a Slavophile, even lived in Russia for seven years - and I'd be chewing at the bit to see some Czech films added to Netflix! Would be happy even if it was just subtitled.
I'm currently planning to create a webtoon heavily inspired by Slavic folklore! I've always loved our mythological demons and other creatures (who wouldn't love a ton of bloodthirsty female demons lol). I've read a lot of asian webtoons/mangas and as much as I like them, when they're set in european-ish fantasy they tend to be butchered... That's why I thought about combining manga style with slavic setting to get to wider audience.
and as a Polish who grew up in 2000s I can at least say that I've watched some Czech cartoons (I had a stack of DVDs with Krtek, it was one of my favourite shows to watch).
Good video on how countries can promote their cultures and folklore through film.