The Story of Stories: Why do We Tell Them? How Long Have We Told Them?
Not everyone can tell a gripping story but telling stories may be as integral to the evolution of Homo sapiens …
Author Archives: Will Kirkland
Tigers on the Tenth Day — Fabled Syria
Zakaria Tamer (b 1931 in Damascus) has been in exile from his native Syria in England since the early 1980s where …
The Secrets — Desire and Emergence in Conservative Israel
Avi Nesher’s 2007 film, The Secrets, is full of them, though not only the secret forbidden love promised by the posters. Neither …
Khorma – The Foolish Crier, Tunisia
Stories of fools are likely as old as the telling of stories themselves, second only to those of powerful heroes …
The Toll Booth — Unsettled Desperation in Turkey
The Toll Booth (2014), more accurately, the” toll taker,” has a nice play on words in it, at least in …
Hell and Good Company: The Spanish Civil War….
The civil war in Spain, 1936-1939, was the dark warning to the world of the war to follow, in almost every …
Women say: Hands Off! — Three Films of the Changing Conversation in Islam
The long fight for autonomy, independence and freedom against enemies canny and brutal, is one of the most popular subjects …
The Big Short: The Street, The Book, The Movie
There are no good guys in Adam McKay’s new movie, The Big Short, nor in the book of the same name …
Walking Through Spain, A Villanelle
Walking Through Spain, A Villanelle Walking through Spain on knotted, riven knees toes soaked in pain backs bent to the …
Enough! — Algerian Film Maker looks at War
Djamila Sahraoui (b 1950) Algerian born director, now living in France was 41 when the thirteen year civil war erupted in …
Halfaouine: Boy of The Terraces –Coming of Age in Tunis, 1990
Every once in a while the unexpected out does itself. In Halfouine, Ferid Boughedir’s small 1990 movie from Tunis not …
William Faulkner and WW I: A Fable
Since I’ve been sparse in posting these last weeks, for various (all good) reasons, I thought I’d re-post this look …