BEEN-SEEN.COM - A DIFFERENCE IN WHERE AND HOW WE TRAVEL

Many cinephiles will remember the recent guerrilla films She's Gotta Have It, El Mariachi and Pi. Besides being thoroughly entertaining films, and springboards to commercial success by their respective directors, they are also inspirational testaments to the courage, resourcefulness and passion of emerging artists burning to tell these stories. For Cavite at least the latter is true. And while time will tell if the film launches the careers of its creators, the film is also an unforgettably stark look at the Phillipines.

Byambasuren Davaa is a city girl. She grew up in the city of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, and later moved to Munich to study film. There, she found a 'better life'. She'd been told about the countryside of western Mongolia by her parents and grandparents, and as she became less and less convinced of the better life she'd found for herself, she went in search of something simpler. From that search, The Cave of the Yellow Dog was born.

I was lucky enough to live in Québec for a few years when I was a teenager. But I'm well aware that it's pretty far off the beaten track for most people. So, Strangers in Good Company is a chance to see a little of what it's like. Sure, you could watch Jésus de Montréal, an urban tale which came out the same year (and you probably should), but for rural atmosphere Strangers is hard to beat.

At the gloriously naïve age of 19 my girlfriend and I flew from California to New York City during our Spring Break in search of the soul of that mythical metropolis. Inspired by be-bop, hip-hop and countless films, we saved and dreamt for months in order to afford what was for us our first adult journey.

It's not always easy to retrace the footsteps of major movies, but one which has been well-documented is the 2004 feature Sideways. Set in Santa Barbara Wine Country, it charts the misadventures of two middle-aged men, would-be novelist Miles (Paul Giamatti) and washed-up actor Jack (Thomas Haden Church). Jack's about to get married, Miles is lost, but they soon find themselves drowning in wine and women (Sandra Oh and Virginia Madsen). And it gets very messy.

The man. Steve McQueen. The car. A 1968 Ford Mustang Fastback GT 390. The city. San Francisco. The trinity of maverick man, powerful machine and stunning setting combine in Bullitt to create a cinematic classic, noteworthy for its significant contribution to the canon of Americana iconography. Forty years after its release, the legacy of Bullitt lives on.

When Beijing Bicycle premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2001, it was banned in mainland China. It took three years and several modifications to lift the ban. It's not surprising that the movie was controversial. At first it sounds relatively benign - the story of a 17-year-old boy who comes to the big city and gets a job as a cycle courier. As the plot unravels, however, it gets darker.

Mulholland Drive is one of those insanely long streets that weaves its way through a huge swathe of Los Angeles. It goes all the way from the ocean, starting at Pacific Coast Highway, through the hills - and ends up in Hollywood, offering great views all the way. Sometimes it stops and gets a bit lost, and at night its elevation over the city provides great sparkling vistas and more than a little eerieness. A little like the David Lynch movie of the same name - long, often dark, creepy and confusing.

In 1960, director Howard Hawks arrived in Tanganyika, now Tanzania, with actors John Wayne, Red Buttons, Hardy Krüger and Elsa Martinelli in tow. They were there to shoot action scenes for his movie Hatari! (meaning 'danger' in Swahili). They filmed on location at the Arusha and Serengeti national parks, at Mount Meru and in the town of Arusha, and created one of the most visually interesting African movies of all time.

If L'Auberge Espagnole is a coming of age movie, Les Poupées Russes is about searching for and finding one's path in life. Five years have passed since Xavier and his friends lived together in their small Barcelona apartment, but now they are all re-united in St. Petersburg for the wedding of Wendy's brother William.

We've seen a lot of New Zealand recently, doubling as Loch Ness in The Water Horse, Middle Earth in The Lord of the Rings, and Skull Island in King Kong. With directors like Peter Jackson making extensive use of the country's dramatic vistas, we'll no doubt be seeing much more of it, but, for a chance to see New Zealand playing itself, watch Whale Rider.

New York has appeared in so many movies, it could almost be considered a star in its own right. It's hard, for example, to imagine Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park being set anywhere else. A lighthearted comedy based on Simon's 1963 play of the same title, it stars a pre-aerobics Jane Fonda and a pre-Sundance Robert Redford as newlyweds Corie and Paul Bratter, who move into a tiny fifth-floor walk-up apartment in a Greenwich Village brownstone.