Bethlehem Kudumba Unit

From Comparative Literature As Core Need In Desk Research and AI As Tool by Ton Zijlstra:

Put together it spells to me that when I am doing some deskresearch shining a better light on literary ‘dark matter’ becomes much more important. Are there any francophone resources, Nordic authors, Eastern European authors, hispanic movements around an issue I am exploring? Yes, the scientific world largely uses English as lingua franca, but language areas also have their own spheres outside of it.

Last night I volunteered at the ticket desk at City Cinema for a sold-out screening of the Malayalam-language Bethlehem Kudumba Unit.

Seventy people gathered a few blocks from my house to watch a film I’d never heard of, in a language I’d never heard of.

I’m left feeling insufficiently curious about my neighbours and their cultural universe. And I’m reminded that my mind spends most of its time wandering only in the English-language landscape. To my detriment.

Postscript: according to Statistics Canada, in 2021 Malayalam was the fourth most common “non-official language spoken in the home” of immigrants to Charlottetown, after Mandarin, Arabic, and Vietnamese.