Chronicles of a Paradise Lost: Filming Absence (Lebanese Cinema 1965-2010)
October 31, 2012
Through a selection of rarely seen gems from decades past, as well as recent releases that have not circulated widely, Chronicles of Paradise Lost: Filming Absence draws a portrait of a young cinema coming into its own. Works on view engage with the complication of internecine conflicts, the poignant experience of surviving violence, reconciliation, and rebuilding, and the oscillations between forgetting and remembering.
The program includes 9 feature-length films, 10 nonfiction narrative films and 8 short films in DigiBETA and DVD formats, in Arabic with English subtitles. Some films from the 1970s and 1980s in the program have been restored, digitized and made available for screening for the first time in North America and Europe.
Program Fee: 20% of the total screening fees for the films booked at your venue
Simon El-Habre (Lebanon; 2009, 86 min. DVD/Digibeta PAL; Screening Fee US$500)
Semaan is leading a quiet life on his farm in the small village of Ain al-Halazoun in the Lebanese mountains. The hamlet was completely emptied and destroyed in combats during the civil war in Lebanon between 1975 and 1990. Today, many years after an official reconciliation, its inhabitants, who are all from one family, regularly go back to the village to cultivate their plots of land or visit their houses and always leave before sunset.
In his comforting and humorous film Simon El Habre observes the life in his quasi ghost village and tries to reflect on the collective and individual memory in a country that seems to live in a collective amnesia and is vulnerable to a new civil war. More
Carlos Chahine (Lebanon/France; 2008, 25 min. Digibeta PAL, US$200)
Karim, a frenchman, thought that he was through with his faraway past and his homeland. But, when back in Lebanon for a few days, he discovers that it is not the case. In Chahine's directorial debut, The North Road, tackles the theme of "Exile". This strong and strange bond that links individuals to a past world, to a homeland, and to all the loved ones that have since disappeared. More
Rania Attieh (Lebanon; 2009, 15 min. Digibeta PAL; Screening Fee US$150 )
Only a few hours into his shift, a cab driver in Tripoli finds a lone boy sitting in the backseat of his car. The boy's peculiar silence forces the cabbie to deal with his most unique passenger yet. A view of everyday life through the eyes of a boy who cannot speak.
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Gilles Tarazi (Lebanon; 2008, 23 min. Digibeta PAL; Screening Fee US$195)
Farid, a young man, has received his visa for emigration and ties up loose ends during his last night in Beirut. Alternately witty and melancholic, reflective and brash, the film captures the nervous energy of bidding farewells to the people and city that make one’s home. More
Talal Khoury (Lebanon; 2009, 19 min. Digibeta PAL; Screening Fee $US100 )
A routine day for Khaled—he must deal with the madness of a friend, his wife, whom he calls “Monster”, and other inconveniences.
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Maroun Baghdadi (Lebanon; 1975, 111 min. Digibeta NTSC; Screening Fee US$500)
Perhaps the first real masterpiece of Lebanese cinema: In the aftermath of the 1967 defeat, four young Lebanese try to figure out their places in a society whose rules seem to have changed. This film proved to be extraordinarily prescient of the civil war that would engulf the country while the film was being edited. More
Michel Kammoun (Lebanon/France; 2006, 83 min. Digibeta PAL; Screening Fee US$500)
After hours, postwar Beirut: one man’s tense but amusing trip by moped captures the pervasive but intangible disquietude that holds the country captive. As Toufik crosses the nightscape, with city lights shimmering and sea breezes at his back, there’s a great sense of calm; yet as he soon discovers, trouble lurks beneath the surface. More
Ghassan Salhab (Lebanon; 2009, 66 min. Digibeta PAL; Screening Fee US$330)
From one of Lebanon’s consummate auteur filmmakers, this nonfictional journey weaves biography with national histories, delving into exile, colonization, and local politics as well as linguistic diversity. Poems, archival footage, and contemporary reflections are blended—but the film’s secret heart is an ode to the filmmaker’s mother, a symbol of strength in an unsettled world. More
Maroun Baghdadi (Lebanon/France; 1982, 108 min. Digibeta NTSC; Screening Fee US$500)
The foremost classic of Lebanese war cinema. Bold, masterfully directed, shot under duress, Baghdadi’s film renders the lived experience of the Civil War from within. New York Film Festival ‘82. More
Maroun Baghdadi (Lebanon/Canada; 1978, 30 min. Digibeta PAL; Screening Fee US$150)
An intimate and tender portrait of the men and women who dreamed of establishing a republic based on justice, equality and secular principles, and took up arms in Lebanon’s National Front in the first chapter the civil war. U.S. premier.
Randa Chahal Sabbagh (France; 1995, 61 min. Digibeta PAL; Screening Fee US$100)
Since 1983, Randa Chahal Sabbagh filmed her family and the daily drumbeat of strife around her. Woven together years later, the moving result is this searching exploration of the effects of the war on one family and the long-term consequences of militant political engagement. More
Maroun Baghdadi (Lebanon; 1979, 80 min. Digibeta PAL; Screening Fee US$100)
In this documentary, Baghdadi recorded the experience of villagers in south Lebanon following the Israeli invasion of 1978. At once humane and humble, the film gives voice to those forgotten left the fray of military strategy, speeches and international diplomacy. Premier screening in the US.
Ahmad Ghossein (Lebanon; 2008, 7 min. Mini DV PAL; Screening Fee US$50)
Combining video footage filmed in the 1980s and a voice-over of letters between Rachid Ghossein and Mariam Hamadeh (the artist’s family), this short non-fiction video ponders the break between between remains and ruins. More
Pamela Ghanimeh (Lebanon/Denmark; 2007, 35 min. Digibeta PAL; Screening Fee US$150)
With the outbreak of the civil war in 1975, the Christian communities of Haret Hreyk, a neighborhood in Beirut’s southern suburbs, began to move to other neighborhoods. Ghanimeh’s family was amongst the last to leave. In the same period, the area witnessed a construction boom fueled by the displacement of Shiites from south of the country to Beirut’s suburbs, due to attacks by the Israeli army. For Ghanimeh’s family all that remains from their life in Haret Hreyk are few memories. More
Dima El-Horr (Lebanon/France; 2001, 27 min. Digibeta PAL; Screening Fee US$100)
When the newly installed neon sign of Imm Ali's ready-to-wear boutique goes out in the middle of the night, speculations abound in the small village of the recently liberated southern tip of Lebanon. Visually eloquent, the film is the first to use the medium of fiction to capture how everyday folks negotiate the quotidian after the withdrawal of the Israeli army and the covert hegemony of Hizbollah. It earned the Grand Prize at, Montpellier Film Festival and also at the Tangiers Film Festival. More
Zeina Daccache (Lebanon, 2009, 85 min. Digibeta; Screening Fee $250) Arabic with English subtitles
A theatre director specialising in working with disadvantaged and traumatised people, Zeina Daccache struggled to set up Lebanon's first prison-based drama project in the country's notorious Roumieh Prison. For 15 months, 45 inmates, some completely illiterate, found themselves working together to present an adaptation of the famous stage play '12 Angry Men', here re-named '12 Angry Lebanese'. Through their new-found creative outlet, we witness the prisoners coalesce into a slick, professional ensemble. Inspiring and honest, this account of the prisoners' journey demonstrates the positive effect of art therapy and the positive effect on some of the most ostracised individuals in society. More
Rania Stephan (Lebanon; 2006, 47 min. Digibeta PAL/DV CAM PAL; Screening Fee US$250) In Arabic with English Subtitles
Shot in the urgency of the July 2006 war led by Israel against Lebanon, these eight short videos present a fantastic ledger of how the average Lebanese negotiated their everyday during and right after the war. Compelling vignettes that give voice to a street-cleaner in the deserted Martyrs Square, residents from the south displaced and relocated to public schools, a volunteer rescue worker in the southern suburbs, parents and kin of martyrs during an informal memorial celebration, a man too eager to perform for television cameras carrying a flag; far from the bombastic frenzy of media broadcast, the tragedy of war is recorded with humility and simplicity. More
Hani Tamba (France; 2005, 26 min. Digibeta PAL; Screening Fee US$386)
Abou Milad is an old door-to-door barber who lost he salon during the Lebanese civil war. He now earns his living by working in the popular cafes of Beirut. One day, a solitary man living in an old manor summons him. More
Jocelyne Saab (Lebanon; 1994, 101 min. Digibeta PAL; US$500)
This imaginative exploration of history follows two women in post-civil war Beirut, whom upon meeting a film collector, sift through movies and reconstruct a vision of their now devastated city.
Jocelyne Saab (France; 1979, 50 min.Digibeta PAL US$450)
Filming during heavy fighting in the civil war, Saab attempts to come to terms with a city and a country she no longer recognizes. Her documentary lays bare how people make sense of their lives in the midst of chaos, violence, and sorrow. A text by award-winning poet Etel Adnan adds to the film’s raw energy. More
