Arab intellectuals and leaders have long been animated by the holy grail of Arab nationalism, an ideology which proclaims that Arabs are one nation, glorifies Arab civilization, language and literature and espouses the necessity of a single Arab state. This utopian idea was in its heyday during Gamal Abdel Nasser’s presidency of Egypt, but in […]
Arik Rotstein’s moody Israeli film, Antenna, is ostensibly about a minor dispute concerning a cellular antenna. In actuality, it’s about family dynamics. The movie — scheduled to be screened by the Toronto Jewish Film Foundation’s Chai Tea series on Sunday, December 10 at 12:30 p.m. and 4 p.m. at the Cineplex Cinemas Empress Walk, 5095 […]
Harvey Weinstein, the serial sexual predator, is now assured of a prominent place in the rogue’s gallery of the Hollywood film industry. Having been accused of harassment, assault and rape by a succession of aspiring and established actresses, the rapacious movie producer has been banished from his own company and the citadels of power in […]
Georgia Turner, a year-round resident of Daytona Beach, a resort in central Florida, was talking about its passion for stock car racing. “Racing is a big part of our heritage,” she said. Although Daytona Beach has miles of scenic beaches, fine museums and a host of eco-tourist attractions, it is still primarily known as the […]
Passions erupt and flow like red-hot lava in Woody Allen’s 48th film, Wonder Wheel, which opens in Canadian theatres on December 8. Set in the 1950s amid the honky-tonk atmosphere of New York City’s Coney Island amusement park, this dark, high-strung drama delves into the lives of four people who touch each other’s hearts profoundly. […]
The massacre of 311 Muslims in a Sufi mosque in the northern Sinai Peninsula on November 24 underscores an unpalatable reality that Egypt has yet to accept and internalize: the Egyptian armed forces have utterly failed to quell the jihadist insurgency in the Sinai. No group claimed responsibility for the attack in the remote town […]
The Holocaust unfolded in a succession of Nazi-occupied countries ranging from Poland and the Soviet Union to France and Hungary, and although much is known about this catastrophe 72 years after the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp by the Red Army, a whole lot of new material is still turning up and enlarging our […]
What would Christmas be like without iconic Christmas songs such as White Christmas, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Sleigh Ride or Chessnuts Roasting on an Open Fire? Larry Weinstein asks this intriguing question in his film, Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas, whose world premiere takes place on the Documentary Channel on December 3 at 8 p.m. CBC TV […]
Muslims are the fastest growing religious minority in Canada. The arrival of 40,000 Syrian refugees in the past year certainly accentuated this trend. From 600 Muslims in Canada in 1931 to 579,000 in 2001 and to more than one million in 2011, the size of the Muslim community has grown exponentially. Statistics Canada expects the Muslim […]
Once upon a time, the American public was fascinated by the spectre of criminality. This era lasted from about 1920 to 1940 and spanned Prohibition and the Great Depression. Sometimes referred to as the golden age of gangsterism, it inspired a profusion of Hollywood movies like Little Caesar and Scarface, an avalanche of novels like Damon […]