Israel

No Other LandYear: 2024Rating: Not RatedLength: 92 minutes / 1.53 hours Documentaries like No Other Land (2024) are not fun. They are necessary. Sure, I’d much rather watch a documentary about street art or an octopus, but a film like this shows just how bad it is in a war-torn part of the world that maybe gets a few minutes a day on a news broadcast. Bringing the human aspects of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians into focus paints a picture that’s hard to ignore. There’s a reason this movie won several awards for its content because it’s necessary viewing to understand what’s happening in that region. What’s initially shocking is how long the territorial conflict between Israel and Palestine has been happening. That the Palestinians have put up with this treatment for decades isn’t really about their persistence but more about the fact that they have nowhere else to go (thus the title of this documentary). It’s depressing to see...

Forest Dark Year: 2017 Author: Nicole Krauss Length: 290 pages ***THIS BOOK WAS RECEIVED FROM A GOODREADS GIVEAWAY*** I’ve read a lot of books this year, but very few of them I would consider “literature.” Forest Dark is the rare exception. The flowery language and high-concept imagery invoked in this book would certainly make it a prime candidate for some art-house film. Author Nicole Krauss doesn’t just tell a story (or two) in this book; she crafts them out of the very essence of the human condition with expertly chosen words. There’s little to no “fluff” in this book, which somewhat explains it somewhat shorter length, especially considering it’s two stories in one. While I am not Jewish, the two, intertwining narratives in Forest Dark pull out the cultural identity from two very different characters. From an aging man who wants to make a legacy without relying too much on his heritage to a woman who has been given an opportunity to use her skills as...

Tag: Israel

MOVIE: No Other Land (2024)

BOOK: Forest Dark (2017)