Our struggle is not just about land or borders; it is about the heart and soul of a people who refuse to be forgotten.
~Samih al-Qasim
The Middle East Film Festival
This really happened. The most grotesque thing you could imagine (until the next thing, at least). This is indeed the TRUTH that Donald Trump posted this morning. He wasn't hacked, and it wasn't a hoax. In what more auspicious possible circumstance could I return to write the first post on this blog since I left things off nearly a year ago?
A introductory post about some of the actors and directors who will come into focus when I get to the heart of this difficult and often horrifying matter. Inevitably, some of these films ,and some of what I write will quickly feel outdated as events become ever more grim.
Ziad Doueiri's 1998 film 'West Beirut' was quite the epiphany for me. Having for many years mentally pictured Beirut as a giant urban mantrap, with perfectly good reason given all the news that we were fed about the place throughout the 1980s, it was virtually impossible to visualise the lives of ordinary Lebanese people in the midst of the madness that engulfed them for fifteen years.
The format here is very simple. I'm going to discuss three Israeli films- 'Lebanon', 'Waltz With Bashir' and 'Beaufort' - about the invasion and occupation of Lebanon. These three films were actually made remarkably close to each other in time. The chronology of the films' production is in reverse order of the moments in history that they describe.
Following the very strict rule of balancing as evenly as possible between the Arab and Israeli perspectives, those three films will be complemented by three Israeli films which present three stages of Israel's invasion of and eventual long-protracted withdrawal from Lebanon.
Here I'm going to write about a film which is gentle and wistful, occasionally funny, and occasionally sad and touching. The beauty of this film lies in the fact that - despite not containing one single word of dialogue between either of the two protagonists and an Israeli character - there are more than enough references, oblique and acute, to reveal what it's like to live day to day as an Arab citizen in the Jewish State.