The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, And they looked at it and thought they had the truth.
~Rumi

Arabs

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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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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Heatopher's Motivational Post, AKA The Prologue

Preview pic for post: Heatopher's Motivational Post, AKA The Prologue

Heatopher of late 2023 has bequeathed himself a daunting task in 2024. With no less lofty an ambition than resolving the Arab/Israeli conflict, if not for the world as a whole, but in my own head at least, I took it upon myself to watch a very strictly equal number of films from the two sides of that monstrous separation wall. These were to be watched in very rigid alternation...

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