Right now, maybe even more than usual, there’s a horrible tragedy going on in the world. It’s painful to dwell on, but I can’t ignore it. I feel with every cell in my body that what Israeli soldiers and American weapons are doing to human beings in Gaza right now is unjustifiable in any context, with any history. But I also know that nothing I do or write can change anything about it. And I’m not trying to start a debate. That doesn’t help anybody. So I can only try to keep doing what I do in a way I feel is constructive.
What I do is write about movies, and one thing I love about movies is the way they can connect us to other people, other places, show us the world through the eyes of others, make us feel things maybe we wouldn’t have otherwise, to understand the world in a different way. So I thought I should see a movie from Palestine. I didn’t know anybody to ask about the subject, so I just looked at the small Palestine section at Scarecrow Video and OMAR (2013) was the one I found that looked most interesting. I don’t remember ever hearing of it, but I had to have when it was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. (Italy’s THE GREAT BEAUTY won that year. I didn’t see that either.) (read the rest of this shit…)
