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

Posts

תל אביב על האש

تل ابيب ع نار

Tel Aviv On Fire

Preview pic for post: Tel Aviv On Fire (2018)

Given the title of the film, it's a funny (happy or otherwise, not sure!) coincidence, that I'm writing this post on November 5th 2025, a date familiar enough to readers in the United Kingdom. Many Britons now seem to have no idea any more of the history, mind, and it's a date which needs a quick search on Wikipedia for most of those not native to these islands. There was zero intention of the two things would overlap. The only reason for writing now is a conversation about this film which took place only two days ago.

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הדונלד והדיפ סטייט

الدونالد والدولة العميقة

Donald 🥴😱😵

Preview pic for post: Donald 🥴😱😵

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?

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بچه‌های آسمان

Children of Heaven (1997)

Preview pic for post: Children of Heaven (1997)

Iranian cinema is one of the most remarkable phenomena in the Modern World. I'm in danger here of making this blog into something which it definitely is not trying to be, but let's pretend for a few minutes that this is a film blog...... If we're going to go there, it's a given that Iranian cinema was deeply influenced by Italian neorealism in the 1960s, and then something strange happened. While the rest of the world moved on and tried out new cinematic fads and trends, this intentionally naive realistic style became the living breathing identity of Iranian cinema...

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Lebanon - Pandora

Preview pic for post: Lebanon

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.

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