Lebanese filmmakers are confronted with the question: What will Lebanon’s future look like? The screenings and conversation will engage with past and present trauma in Lebanon, an imagined future, and a dream space of “where to?"
Organized by Aciah Abdulsater, MA Candidate in Film and Media Studies at Columbia University School of the Arts.
Schedule of Events
10 am–11:30 am
Screening
Erased, Ascent of the Invisible (Ghassan Halwani, 2018, 76 minutes)
“Thirty-five years ago, I witnessed the kidnapping of a man I know.
He has disappeared since.
Ten years ago, I caught a glimpse of his face while walking in the street, but I wasn’t sure it was him.
Parts of his face were torn off, but his features had remained unchanged since the incident.
Yet something was different, as if he wasn’t the same man.
12 pm–1:45 pm
Screening
1982 (Oualid Mouaness, 2019, 100 minutes)
“1982" is a life-affirming coming-of-age tale set at an idyllic school in Lebanon’s mountains on the eve of a looming invasion. It unfolds over a single day and follows an 11-year-old boy’s relentless quest to profess his love to a girl in his class. As the invasion encroaches on Beirut, it upends the day, threatening the entire country and its cohesion. Within the microcosm of the school, the film draws a harrowing portrait of a society torn between its desire for love and peace and the ideological schisms unraveling its seams.
In his debut feature, director Oualid Mouaness delivers an ode to innocence in which he revisits one of the most cataclysmic moments in Lebanon's history through the lens of a child and his vibrant imagination. The film demonstrates the complexities of love and war, and the resilience of the human spirit.
3:15 pm–5:30 pm
Screenings
Once Upon a Revolution (Soha Shukayr, 2021, 17 minutes)
In 2019, Nay and Hassan meet on the streets of Beirut at the 17 October Revolution. They both believe in human dignity and the need to fight corruption and injustice, but they view the world in completely different ways. When the police crackdown on the revolt, everything turns into a nightmare. As a last resort to shifting the tide of the revolution, Nay and Hassan decide to leak to the media a corruption allegation involving a politician who works with Nay’s father. The consequences of this action turn out to be much worse than expected.
Us. Lebanon. (Elijah Ghossein, 2021, 6 minutes)
Two Lebanese fighters, a man and woman, sit on a white-sanded beach, by a sea of red. A forest of cedars looms over the conversation. A conversation representing the entirety of Lebanese men and women, and the scene a symbol of the Lebanese flag. White is peace, red, sacrifice, and green is freedom and memory. Every sentence is related to this intersection of time and place in Lebanese history. What is freedom? What does it cost? It becomes clear that, like the citizens of Lebanon, these fighters are united by a love for their country but separated by their ideas of what that love should be.
Filmmaker Roundtable
Featuring: Ghassan Halwani; Oualid Mouaness; Soha Shukayr; Elijah Ghossein; Nico Baumbach, Film and Media Studies; and Sam Lahoud, Beirut Film Society.
Moderated by Aciah Abdulsater, MA Candidate in Film and Media Studies at Columbia University School of the Arts.
Presented by
Columbia Middle East Institute
Columbia Global Centers | Amman
Columbia University of the Arts’ Film and Media Studies Program
Beirut Film Society