This was a fascinating comment to me, as it really made a lot of moments in the film click into place, and about how Farah was not just settling problems against Tunisia, but with Tunisia.

I could definitely feel this at times. There were points where it almost felt like a filmed stage production, with room for more general blocking, than a specific film set.

What were the moments in the film where the length of time afforded by the medium favored the film? Were there any better suited for a short?

Are there moments in the film where this improvisational style is brought to the forefront?

I read this almost as an attempt to distance herself from any categorizations of her work, that she is letting the work speak for itself in all facets. Does this seem to be the case?

Is this correct? Or does it drift into the "great man" hypothesis of history?

Could this have been prevented with more robust economic institutions? Or does this underplay other factors?

Could this be related to the American Civil Rights movement? Although there are clear differences, a black woman refused to give up her bus seat to a white man. The NAACP didn't help her court case at all, because her name was Claudette Colvin, and she was a young woman who had just had a child out of wedlock. Perhaps there are other reasons why resistance groups in these countries didn't celebrate these protests in the same way.

This is somewhat personal for me, as I have a friend who is Egyptian and goes to Egypt regularly. He's been shot at demonstrating against Mubarak and the Muslim Brotherhood, but he maintains that some of the worst actions he's seen or heard happened under the new military rule.

This really is classic signs of unrest, nothing causes violence as much as when the youth of a country feel that they have no recourse and no hope for change.

It's interesting to see it described as this, especially because now the Arab Spring has become the Arab Winter. I'm reminded of a quote from Hunter S. Thompson, that you can almost look out and see the high water mark of the wave, and the point where the wave broke and rolled back.

How can a film which explicitly compares the actions of the protagonist to the holocaust be accused of absolving them of responsibility? Perhaps I'm missing something large here, but I do not understand the critiques that focus on the film arguing that it portrays "just following orders" as a legitimate excuse, particularly when the film goes out of its way to portray the amnesia as their means of denying their own guilt and draws explicit parallels between the actions of the Israeli soldiers to other horrific massacres throughout history.

This came up a lot, of the artificiality that people force between themselves in violent events. Are there parallels between this and other cinema focused on artificiality that we watched already?

That was an incredibly powerful line, especially when combined with the archival footage that was produced afterwards. Especially after studying the Holocaust myself, it's hard not to draw the parallels between the death squads in the early stages of the Holocaust and the Christian groups executing civilians here.

I find it interesting that in several points in the movie, people are forced to empathize when animals die, but are able to shut themselves off from human death. What causes this phenomenon?

This was my immediate comparison for Waltz with Bashir, as both of them focused in a similar way not just on the strain on the soldiers, but also on the damage that those soldiers do to the native population. I would explicitly compare the shots of the Israeli soldiers finding the massacre with Joker finding the lye soaked mass grave, as well as the scene where the child is shot in the orchard with the scene where the vietcong sniper is revealed to be an adolescent girl.

How did this character fit in to the themes of the story as a whole? Was it a message about the area fitting into a larger world, or something else?

How have these distribution mechanisms changed how and who views these films? It seems like an interesting question, how that aspect may have changed how the films are made and who the target is.

I also thought that those scenes demonstrated how commonplace the danger had become, and how desensitized the populace had become to it. A man was able to take out the garbage with a tank's cannon pointing at his head and he barely seems to notice.

It was fascinating as well, as I didn't get the impression that us as an audience were the only ones noticing this, but that E.S. himself noticed it. I found that fascinating to see him, in real time, realize how his is being percieved by others.

What would it have been like to watch this film having seen all of these before? I feel it would have given a different metacontextual aspect to it.

Interestingly, I saw it slightly differently. Although I certainly thing that the moment was unironic and sincere, it cut both ways, as the awkwardness of the man reading off of the note and of the man trying to fold the note back into his pocket both grounded the moment in a realness. The moment certainly didn't mock the man, but I also don't know if it quite fits the bill of a romantic interpretation.

Is this an inherent part of civil wars, or specific to Lebanon?

I thought this was an interesting insight, that the film maker can view this as a matter of the topic reaching out. Could this be seen as a cultural effect of the war, or more of a personal effect?

This is really fascinating, particularly as an American where there is a strong cultural narrative surrounding all American conflicts. In WWII, American and the Allies were defeating Hitler. In Vietnam, it was a mistake that caused too many to die. There is a mythos that Americans can reach on to. However, here this seems to suggest the opposite, that people don't know how to talk about the war.

"Ambivalence" is an interesting way of phrasing this. Did the author mean how the communities became divided, yet had no stakes in the actual conflict, or something else?

This seems a marked difference from "Where is the Friend's Home", where there were so many universal elements in the film that I could relate to much of them. With this film, although I could feel sympathy for them, perhaps I didn't feel as much strictly defined empathy, because I do not have this experience of having a war fully permeate my life.

Although there were certainly universal elements to the film, is the film purely humanist? Were there no critiques of Iran within?

Although I certainly agree that entertainment should not be the sole goal of art, it's an interesting aesthetic debate as to what other goals should be. If not entertainment, then what else should art strive for?

The camera in this film was notable for how little it was noticed. The camera felt as an impartial observer, not as if it was being advertised, which stands in stark contrast to Iranian cinema overall.

Could Kiarostami also be seen as reflecting the Deluzian concept of the Rhizomal nature of society, as he interacts only with individuals yet the pressure of society can be felt? Are the constant rules set upon the protagonist not the classic Deluzian concept of microfascism, as the constant rules enforced by the elders is within small incidences, yet adds up to a feeling of dread throughout the film?

This was very clear throughout the film, as the arguments kept becoming circular and making no progress, and all of the elders who antagonize the child constantly justify their antagonism through the lens of stiff minded tradition. Looking at this film merely as a description seems to lose much value, as there is clear critique of Iranian values in the film.

The child in this film was a very strong audience stand-in, as t he long takes and the focus on the child made me feel as if I were truly in the shoes of the child, a child lost at the end of the long day desperately trying to find someone else.

When did this convention change, if at all? Did Cairo Station have a hand in that change?

I'm just now noticing how clear the motif of water is throughout the film, what is it pointing towards?

The unionization plotline didn't make too much sense to me thematically. Was it just a sign of the times, or does it tie in to the main story thematically?

That scene did an excellent job of displaying the sheer loneliness and alienation that consume Qinawi, showing him obsessing over the looks of the women, and showing him adapting that general obsession to a specific object of obsession when he draws the bucket over the model's arm.

I didn't think about it as such at the time, but it certainly does feel as if this represents not just his anti-social attitude, but his downright antipathy towards others at the end of the film.