Letter from Beirut
Three years after the start of the civil war, the director returns to her city for a few months. Straddling a country at war and one at peace, she finds it hard to readjust to life. By restarting a bus when public transport was no longer available, she was able to bring a new sense of normalcy to the war-torn city: people boarded the bus, seeing it as a safe space.
| Director | Jocelyne Saab |
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How to rebuild connections, how to reconstruct, how to bring hope back to a country fractured by civil war? What meaning can be found in the ruins and disappearance? How to understand the chaos? Saab's cinema, driven by these questions, evolves from war reporting towards a work of poetry and fiction. By filming, she documented, archived, and denounced the violence of history. By turning her camera towards the silent victims of conflicts, she offered a counterpoint to the usual media coverage. For Letter from Beirut, one of her most intimate and original films – beautifully restored by the Jocelyne Saab Association –, she stages herself and fictionalizes situations that allow her to describe her torn city and country. For the writer Wassyla Tamzali: "Jocelyne Saab managed to say it all. She created a hard-hitting work. She produced images that think. And that make us reflect on social and political situations that go beyond the Lebanese conflict alone. For this, she knew how to find the right tone, that of her voice when she reads the poems of Etel Adnan, always between intimacy and declaration."
Léa Morin
Curator and freelance researcher
-
Français
50 mn
Language: Français
Subtitles: Français -
English
50 mn
Language: English
Subtitles: English
- Année 1978
- Pays Lebanon, France
- Durée 50
- Producteur Jocelyne Saab
- Langue Arab, French
- Sous-titres French, English
- Résumé court How to bring hope back to a fractured country? Jocelyne Saab attempts to do so in Beirut, three years after the start of the civil war.
How to rebuild connections, how to reconstruct, how to bring hope back to a country fractured by civil war? What meaning can be found in the ruins and disappearance? How to understand the chaos? Saab's cinema, driven by these questions, evolves from war reporting towards a work of poetry and fiction. By filming, she documented, archived, and denounced the violence of history. By turning her camera towards the silent victims of conflicts, she offered a counterpoint to the usual media coverage. For Letter from Beirut, one of her most intimate and original films – beautifully restored by the Jocelyne Saab Association –, she stages herself and fictionalizes situations that allow her to describe her torn city and country. For the writer Wassyla Tamzali: "Jocelyne Saab managed to say it all. She created a hard-hitting work. She produced images that think. And that make us reflect on social and political situations that go beyond the Lebanese conflict alone. For this, she knew how to find the right tone, that of her voice when she reads the poems of Etel Adnan, always between intimacy and declaration."
Léa Morin
Curator and freelance researcher
-
Français
Duration: 50 minutesLanguage: Français
Subtitles: Français50 mn -
English
Duration: 50 minutesLanguage: English
Subtitles: English50 mn
- Année 1978
- Pays Lebanon, France
- Durée 50
- Producteur Jocelyne Saab
- Langue Arab, French
- Sous-titres French, English
- Résumé court How to bring hope back to a fractured country? Jocelyne Saab attempts to do so in Beirut, three years after the start of the civil war.
