The past resembles the future more than one drop of water resembles another.
~Ibn Khaldun
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 Inevitably, some of these films ,and some of what I write will quickly feel outdated as events become ever more grim.
Purim falls on the 14th day of the Jewish month of Adar. It fell in late February in the year that I stayed in Jerusalem. There was a big fancy dress party, and then the day after was seemingly a fairly quiet one until my friend from down the corridor came to ask me if I'd heard the news about what had happened in Hebron.
I need to remind myself that I'm not trying to write my PhD thesis here. These are just emotional reactions to films that react to and reflect on anything that ails the Middle East (occasionally with some humour, thankfully). Let us begin with a love story from the place where the pain is currently most strongly felt (and of course *has been felt* for a long time
How did this come about? Approximately two months after October 7th I had a few conversations with friends on both the Jewish and Arab(-sympathising) sides about films relating to the Arab-Israeli conflict...
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...