Stacey Tenenbaum’s unusual documentary, Shiners, examines an archaic trade that seems destined for oblivion. Her subjects are shoe shiners who polish and buff shoes and boots for a living. As she suggests, they’re a dwindling breed. Her film, a paean to working-class men and women, will be screened at the Royal Cinema in Toronto on February […]
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A German Against The Third Reich
Friedrich Kellner, a German civil servant, kept a secret diary from 1939 to 1945 in which he charted Germany’s inexorable descent into war, totalitarianism and genocide. A committed Social Democrat and a steadfast opponent of Nazism, he was born in Mainz and lived in the small Upper Hesse town of Laubach, 73 kilometres northeast of […]
From the antisemitic and fascist movement of Charles Maurras’ Action Francais, through the collaborationist wartime Vichy and the Algérie Française eras, reactionary thought has a long history in twentieth century France. It was one of the mainstays of a current which vigorously opposed the revolutionary and Republican traditions. Since the disaster of World War II, in […]
Military tensions on Israel’s northern front reached a boiling point yesterday, prompting speculation whether a new Middle East war is inevitable. In the early hours of February 10, an Israeli Apache helicopter shot down the first Iranian drone to penetrate Israeli airspace. It was downed in the Jordan Valley, near the Jordanian border. By way […]
One of the world’s least progressive countries may at last be on the cusp of meaningful change. Saudi Arabia, the seat of Islam, was until very recently a major exporter of Wahhabism, an austere and intolerant strain of Islam which Al Qaeda adopted for its own malicious ends. Lest we forget, 15 of the 19 […]
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The Big Sick
Interracial dating, an increasingly common phenomenon in Western societies, is the subject of Michael Showalter’s romantic comedy, The Big Sick. It’s about the on-again, off-again relationship between a Pakistani American standup comedian and an Anglo postgraduate student. Kumail Nanjiani, playing himself, meets Emily Gardner (Zoe Kazan) in a comedy nightclub one night. In a clever […]
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A Classic War Film
There are only a handful of movies I would bother watching again, and Das Boot (The Boat), a German-language war film released in 1981, qualifies as one. I caught it on the Netflix streaming network the other night, and it was as thrilling, gripping and spine-tingling as I remembered it 37 years ago. Wolfgang Petersen’s […]
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Israel Laboring Under An Illusion
Without divulging names, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has let it be known that Israel has established informal and unofficial bilateral relations with Sunni Arab regimes fearful of Iran’s growing influence in the Middle East, particularly in Syria and Lebanon. It’s no big secret that Saudi Arabia, an oil-rich conservative ally of the United States, […]
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In Between — An Israeli Arab Movie
Maysaloun Hamoud’s debut feature film, In Between, examines the Arab minority in Israel through the eyes of three young Israeli Arab women living in the world’s first all-Jewish city, Tel Aviv. It opens in Vancouver on February 9, in Toronto on February 16 and in Ottawa on April 6. Laila (Mouna Hawa), Salma (Sana Jammelieh) […]
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Words of Wisdom From Germany
Words of wisdom from two German politicians: During his most recent trip to Israel, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel made a number of observations that Israelis would do well to seriously consider. Speaking of the possibility of a two-state solution, which Germany strongly backs but which the current Israeli government appears to have abandoned, he […]