Lion's Tail Films, London (2025)

31/03/2025

On one of my least favourite streets, at this scary point in history, I found myself a little chirped up by this sweet th*****me on their way to an Eid celebration. Beauty is often more beautiful in ugly places. Eid Mubarak 🥳

19/03/2025

Here I’ve chosen 10 pictures which encapsulate the happy and love-filled times I spent in Gaza over the years.

The problem is I’m running out of words for the variations of heart break I feel.

Picture 1: My lovely day spent with two Gazan artists, husband and wife duo and

Picture 2: A gorgeously humble little golden onion-like mosque which is probably now a pancake 😔

Picture 3: A couple with a baby by beautiful - I have another picture by her in our guest room and it makes my heart sing (and also deeply ache)

Picture 4: A remnant of Palestinian Airlines. Yes - Palestine once had an airline of their own as well as many other things of their own, for instance a land

Picture 5: A mandate era house in Gaza, a little like the one we lived in for 4 years in Jerusalem. It could easily also be a pancake now. 😔It was surrounded by lush gardens filled with cacti and ornate birds

Picture 6: The ‘battery man’ who I filmed with. He recycled car batteries somehow out of some derivative of saline solution and all the lights in his house were powered by one. ‘Even my wife, sometimes’ he told me laughingly. Has he survived all this?

Picture 7: The still beautiful sea

Picture 8: Dina arranging her pictures for me to film

Picture 9: My own boys and our beautiful nanny Grace who allowed me to work (and go to Gaza and film) by loving our children as much as we did

Picture 10: Happy, silly times filming with this man, his girls and his donkey and cart. They were so poor but they gave me so much, most of all their time and their laughter.

09/02/2025

‘My father just died. He was a farmer and an engineer,’ I said to our driver Serjei in Kyiv via Google Translate.

In some ways relying on Google Translate keeps conversation concise. You choose only the essential words for that moment.

‘My mother has 8 goats and they love eating banana skins, ‘ Serjei replied.

‘I’m sorry I guess I’m not so good looking,’ he continued.

As we trudged up an icy slope with my camera kit to get some shots of a snowy, grey Kyiv he added: ‘Beauty doesn’t come without sacrifice.’

I don’t know what I’d expected from Ukraine, but having spent last week there with my new job as head of comms with the David Nott foundation, I find myself in thrall to this land and its people.

For the past three years they have been defending Europe - every man over 26 years old is expected to fight - they fight on rotation.

We travelled the vast landscapes in enormous trains - guided by the beautiful Khrystyna, between three cities - Lviv, Kyiv and Vinnytsia - to meet surgeons saving lives on the frontline.

Psychological warfare removes any remnant of normal life - ‘teachers send the children home every day saying there are land mines in the schools. No one knows the truth.’ said one anaesthetist. Sirens sound day and night leaving people dithering with jeopardy - to go to the shelter or try to get a full night of sleep?

The vast train stations, one housing an ornate organ are frequented with men of all ages in army fatigues, leaving for and returning from the front.

I was left with the remarks of another Serjei - proudly showing me pictures of his last trip to the front - standing in snowy forests with his battalion. He was to return the following day. ‘How many of your battalion returned from the last one?’ I asked.

‘Only 50 per cent of us came back.’

💔🇺🇦

07/02/2025

Oh Dad, your absence fills our world.

But your legacy lives on. And as we see from the enormous piles of letters arriving at home, that therewas rarely a soul you met, whose life you didn’t touch in some very lovely or quirky way. Your kindness, your generosity and your strength, and that word which crops up in letter after letter – that ever present ‘twinkle’.

And we can honestly say, that no one here, will ever forget you.

08/01/2025

2025 is dawning brightly for me as I start a new role as Head of Communications for the David Nott Foundation https://davidnottfoundation.com this Monday.

Since hearing David’s unrivalled Desert Island Discs interview in 2016, the foundation has been in my sights as the epitome of authentic altruism, supporting surgeons at work in some of the world’s toughest environments.

Then I got to meet the wonderful Elly Nott and to do some filming and photography for them in Somaliland, Palestine and Libya, to document the experiences of some of these courageous surgeons.

It’s hard to feel useful when you compare yourself to highly-skilled medics. I have a memory of crossing into Gaza just after a previous devastating conflict in 2014. At the Hamas checkpoint I saw a group of men being questioned intently.

Amid the confusion I realised the men were speaking Spanish with a strong Chilean accent.

It turned out they were originally Palestinian, (Chile has a huge Palestinian diaspora), all of them surgeons - coming back to their homeland to help out. Oh to be that useful, I thought to myself, my camera kit losing its lustre as I compared our respective life contributions.

It turned out the Hamas guy was trying to get the surgeons to offload all the bottles of wine they had picked up in Bethlehem on the way, before the bottles entered Gaza where they are strictly haram. And we all, including the Hamas official, laughed as the surgeons emptied miniatures of gin and whisky from the pockets of their combat trousers.

As I go about my work, which can take me in many delightfully unexpected directions, I feel a little like a carrier pigeon, picking up little sights and sounds from places very few of us get to visit.

I feel really excited to be able to put my time into this new job, and squished onto the top corner of our somewhat overpopulated fridge door, is Emily Dickinson’s little line, which always spurs me on.

I’m already the laughing stock of the family for my penchant for motivational stickers so I have nothing to lose.

‘In this short life which lasts about an hour, how much, how little, is within our power?’

24/12/2024

It’s not about the homeware, but our hand blown tumblers from Hebron, Palestine are full of family memories.

As we sip and toast and glug - we are transported back to our lives there , and the Natacheh family ceramics and glass shop outside Hebron, where we were regular shoppers.

For children’s parties they would make us mugs with the children’s names in lieu of party bags. Always a friendly welcome and a free gift and a chance to paint a plate or watch the molten glass taking shape at the end of a tube.

I read that the word ‘fiasco’ comes from the Italian glass flask when it goes a bit wrong. If a beautiful Venetian piece was flawed, they turned it into an ordinary bottle.

My heart breaks along with the tumblers as we smash our way through them in daily life - knowing how hard it is to return to the besieged West Bank now - blocked out in red in the Foreign Office travel advice.

But my heart breaks even more for its people - lives and hopes and dreams smashed like our tumblers.

This Christmas I noticed a little advert for Bethlehem Baubles www.bethlehembaubles.com and I contacted the owner having seen the friendly face of Sami Natacheh on her site - the very man who made me my treasured cup saying ‘Lusy’ which holds my pens on my desk.

And within a fortnight we received a package direct from the Bethlehem loaded with delightful hand blown green and clear tumblers to replenish our supply.

This comes as a toast for all our friends in the Holy Land. That this fiasco can pour out some redemption one day. And Happy Christmas one and all. 🎄💫

23/12/2024

It was one of the great highlights of my year to film the wonderful Avi Shlaim, Israeli British revisionist ‘new historian’.

And another of the great honours of my year to work alongside - filming in Israel in early October - and recording a full gamut of voices and views.

One of the many takeaways from interviewing Avi was the pause - of anything from 5 to 15 seconds between hearing the question and giving his answer.

For this reason, every answer was beautifully articulate, clear and accurate. Just like his writing. And combined with a great warmth and generosity of spirit alongside an acutely agile mind. I am totally in awe.

His books, including The Iron Wall, The Lion of Jordan and Three Worlds, shed bounteous light on the situation we are in now.

Another one coming very soon: Genocide in Gaza.

And hopefully our documentary too. 🎥

27/11/2024

Another teen in the house. Hamish Rashimi you are now 13.

We were hoping for an 11/11/11 and you arrived on 16/11 - but an equally rare en caul birth.

In medieval times, this was seen as a sign of good luck. It was considered an omen that the child was destined for greatness.

Or at least a sign you were not going to drown at sea.

That’s one worry off the list!

When you arrived the Lion thought you were a dinosaur baby. ‘What is THAT?’ he asked of the little brown peanut 🥜 in my arms. You arrived with a sun tan and you have had one ever since - even when the rest of us have wintry blue knees.

‘What did you call your baby?’ asked the lovely lady in the hospital who came to check your hearing. ‘Hamish’ we said.

‘Hamesh!’ She cried. ‘That is a very great person from India - where I come from. Hamesh Rashimi! you must know him, he is a very famous Bollywood singer.’

So Rashimi you became. At least by nickname.

And now you are almost old enough to wear a medallion too.

I am constantly in awe of the kindness and gentleness of teenaged boys, having two in the house.

And you can express your emotions like when we went to watch Paddington 3 and you could say that the ending made you cry because Paddington said he came a little bit from everywhere, and you thought that was a bit like us. And the older cub admitted it gave him goosebumps.

I love that. And now you even say that after two years, you have settled in to this enormous city and that it might even feel a bit like home. Or home for now at least. 😉

11/11/2024

Today I’m thinking deeply today about those who lost their lives in conflicts both in our time and out of it.

In 2009, this month, I had to leave Afghanistan where the Lion and I had been living for almost 2 years because the Afghan security services had foiled a bomb plot. It would have gone off under our bedroom window.

‘Were you ever afraid?’ Is a question people ask in relation to Afghanistan. I wasn’t. But rather mortified than terrified - to leave my job and dear Afghan colleagues who shone so much light into my days, and to be leaving them all to face what we now know was to come.

In my early days in Kabul, my Grandfather died and in our production meeting a colleague sang a beautiful Islamic prayer. The room was totally quiet as everyone bowed their heads in my Grandfather’s memory. I remember imagining the same reception in my old office in Soho before I swapped my heels for a headscarf.

The laughter in our office, as and and and will vouch, was a constant, reverberating energy wave in our building.

We laughed when I mis-spelled the Afghan province of Kunduz in newly learnt Farsi and wrote ‘butt thief’, and we laughed when they said thank you for your nice telephone message it sounded like telephone ‘massage’ and we laughed when I introduced our editor, called Marta, , and they thought I was talking about a martyr.

I tried on a burkha for a long car journey and it was so short I looked like a jellyfish and even in the longest one in the shop, Anwar said ‘Lucy Jaan do you really think an Afghan lady would be seen out with those on her feet?’ pointing to my size 42 white Converse.

Today, we’re all spread like pomegranate seeds around the world.

How I cried as I the plane soared out of the city, the dusty mountains blanketed in cubic housing, and minarets pointing into the blue grey sky.

I’m not just thinking about our grandparents and WW2. I’m thinking about all those in countries of conflict today.

And feeling huge gratitude to the Afghan security guys who allowed me to be here today with Debbie dog on my foot, wearing her little red poppy on her collar.

01/11/2024

Hello everyone - looking for a Photographer/Videographer based in or near Idlib in Syria to help out on a project. Any thoughts gratefully received. 😊

25/10/2024

Nathan Coley created this installation which is in Regents Park for Frieze London. He was inspired to create this piece after seeing these words on the separation wall in Jerusalem. It spoke to me.

16/10/2024

Toward Peace

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Perhaps some part of me still believes
peace is a destination,
a place we arrive, ideally together.

I notice how shiny it is, this belief,
like a flower made of crystal,
beautiful but lifeless,

devoid of the dust and scruff
that come from living a real day.
Meanwhile, there is this invitation

to grow into peace the way real flowers grow -
from dirt into air. With blight
and drought, beetles and hail.

Meanwhile this invitation
to live in the tangle of fear and failure,
to be humbled by my own inner wars

and wonder how to find a living peace
right here, the peace that arrives
when we take just one more step through the mess

toward compassion and notice,
as our foot rises, our heart also rises
and in that lifted moment,

still scraping along in the dirt,
there is peace so real we become light,
become the momentum that is the change.

09/10/2024

I just read that Israel bombed the last functioning bakery in Northern Gaza. Bread is known as عيش ‘aish’: ‘life’s’ in some Arab countries. The staple diet. The sine qua non of survival.

I was reminded of a film and photography assignment where I was allowed access to the basics of the UNRWA food and health provision in Gaza a few years ago.

I have the David Bowie song ‘Where are we now?’ running on repeat in my head.

And where is this strong young man with floury eyebrows, and this bright eyed girl having her pulse checked? The smiling local genius who recycled car batteries in his back room, and the dignified line of new Mums with their babies?

Last week I viewed Gaza through my zoom lens from the Israeli border near the Kibbutzim that have been the centre of the world’s attention with names and faces and banners and billboards. And stories - so many stories.

Where are we now?
The moment you know
You know, you know
As long as there’s sun
As long as there’s sun
As long as there’s rain
As long as there’s rain
As long as there’s fire
As long as there’s fire
As long as there’s me
As long as there’s you

24/09/2024

I put on this t shirt for my run this morning for the first time since 2016, when I took part in the Bethlehem Marathon organised by Right for Movement.

As my feet crunched through golden leaves - Debbie the dog in perfect autumnal camouflage - I centred my thoughts on Bethlehem, where our third cub was born just over 9 years ago.

That not so little town - recorded in my muscle memories for ever as the place of physical endurance from childbirth to running races.

We used to visit the Palestinian obstetrician for check ups - a charming and funny chain smoker in his white coat. I’d asked for a water birth, and the doc almost fell off his chair with laughter, recomposing himself with a glass of water. ‘My dear, here in the West Bank we have barely enough water to put in this glass and you are asking for a bath of it in which to have your baby!?’

The cub almost arrived in the car park as we hadn’t predicted red traffic lights all the way in our 1am dash.

And there she was, Petra, wrapped in a home knit blanket provided by the Holy Family Hospital and lying in a bassinet next to the Palestinian new arrivals - somewhat larger and with significantly less head hair.

‘They are, each one different and they are all so beautiful,’ sighed the midwife.

Petra has travelled far and wide since her birth but those Palestinian 9 year olds can’t move. To visit a relation in another West Bank town, such as Nablus, Hebron or Jenin is virtually impossible. The check points, the settlers running amok burning olive groves, killing villagers, the IDF demolishing houses and shooting with impunity.

The separation wall blocks all movement for Palestinians, which was the motivation for the founders - to get men and women out and about running in the tiny space they had.

There was every age and shape - elderly ladies in their long traditional ‘thobes’ and walking sticks; wiry young men, young girls in immaculate makeup.

It was a beautiful atmosphere. One that I need to revisit in my mind to imagine things can improve.

As the Arabic expression goes: iom asal, iom basal. Days of honey days of onion.

‎ 🧅 يوم عسل 🍯 يوم بصل

Praying for some honey.

18/09/2024

In 2007 the lion and I began married life in Afghanistan. Here we are in our hammock in our garden in Share Naw (The ‘new town’ of Kabul and central district).

I worked in an office with about 20 Afghan colleagues making radio programmes and documentary film. I have never laughed as much a place of work. Everyone called each other Jaan (Dear) or Qandam (my sugar lump). Qand (the sugar lump in Farsi) is where we get our word candy.

We had a sign on our door saying ‘Women Working’ as this kind of work place for women was a then novelty after the Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996-2001 and women were forbidden to work.

My female colleagues, Nadia and Farida begged me to start having children there in Afghanistan. ‘You can bring them - the chooch-e-pooch (little brood of children) to the office and we’ll look after them, Lucy Jaan.’

Love was in the air both at work and at home.

My new Mum-in-law sent me packets of dried mushrooms in the post, as she knew I was a funghi-phile and loving the damp, mushrooms did not favour arid Afghanistan. Or so I thought - until I travelled to the far north east province of Badakhshan where I found huge white ‘khaternak’ which I brought home to the Lion along with a lump of raw Lapis lazuli for our first wedding anniversary.

The lapis sits on our shelf in London. An emblem of that time, and love.

Since August 2021, I have been rendered wordless since the Taliban took control of the country once more. But now there are some more beautiful words which matter.

Since their first book of short fiction, My Pen is the Wing of a Bird, the Afghan Women’s Writing Group with the amazing have just published Dear Kabul - A Year in the Life of an Afghan Women’s Writing Group.

These words are fragments of our time, already history. These are the words we need to be reading. Buy both books, and give them to your friends and family.

‘My dear Kabul, give me your hand, put your head on my shoulder and don’t be afraid.’

21/08/2024

Optimism is perhaps my greatest weakness.

Was I not thinking when I booked a train journey for myself and 3 children, 2 guinea pigs, a dog, a snare drum, a set of bagpipes, a trumpet, 9 large bags, and clearly a whole load of hope in my heart…Even when the boards in the station flipped down: delayed, cancelled, terminates at Edinburgh…we hung in there.

We always get there in the end, I thought, after 2 decades of unhappy-sounding suitcase zips and always a wing and a prayer.

We shared our carriage with what felt like the entire Edinburgh festival, buffet car out of service and not even a bottle of Highland Spring for sale.

Now, my every badly-planned travel ergonomic comes with a ‘mantra of: ‘But Mummy, what could possibly go wrong?’

And then they take pictures of me with my phone in gargling fish pose when I fall asleep. 😵

12/08/2024

It’s so difficult to address the complexities of our times and our extraordinary island with children, even with a Week Junior in hand.
We watched this brilliant film by Ken Loach with the children and it showed so much more than can ever be told. I’d highly recommend for age 12 plus - along with so many of his others - Sorry We Missed You, Kes, Kathy Come Home, I, Daniel Blake. The cubs have been incredibly moved by them all - but you might need subtitles for Kes 😉

19/07/2024

The Lion 🦁had a bit of a weep when he unveiled his birthday present from me and the cubs. I don’t know if you agree, but childhood is like a constantly moving, shifting thing - like a sky or a sea - the colours, the shapes, the expressions constantly evolving.

There are times when I study one of their newly-awoken faces and wonder if I’d set a film camera I could have charted the changes during the night. As I could swear they looked different when they went to bed.

Though not a cub as such, our faithful Debbie the dog has entwined herself in our little family trajectory in 6 years. She swam away our Covid cares with us in Oman, neatly switching to grubby Camden streets and green parks full of squirrels on our return, and loyally shares long hauls, trains and epic car journeys through mountains and deserts with a regulatory excited wag at the end of it. The pet trajectory is never long enough - and I can almost feel her whiskers and breath on my cheek as I look at this image.

I am in a constant state of wonder and admiration at anyone who can draw or paint anything, let alone something that looks exactly like the ones you love. Since I cheat and use a beautiful piece of technology to film - some people simply reach for a charcoal or oil with a bare hand and off they go…

These will be treasured til we end our days. And who knows where they’ll hang beyond that? The adventures continue.

Thank you dearest friend for your art and fun and your love.

Lion's Tail Films