Somebody Stood Here — Hail

One dark rock standing up out of an ocean of sand. Get close and the whole face of it is covered in people — pale pecked figures with their arms raised, cut through a black skin of desert varnish, at every height from the ground to well above reach. Newer carvings cut straight across older ones. Different hands, different centuries, the same wall. On one panel there are long-horned cattle. Abdullah looks at them, then turns and looks out at a dune sea where nothing could drink, and says so. Nobody explains it to him. And Ali — twenty-six episodes of carrying a camera around a country trying to hold onto it — stands in front of the wall with it down at his side and works out that somebody already did this, with a stone, before writing existed. Episode 23 of HAJIMETE, a continuing anime series shot vertically in 25-second films, following a first journey across Saudi Arabia. Japanese audio. Subtitles in Arabic, English, Spanish and Turkish.