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3 films in package
Hostage: The Bachar Tapes
Hostage: The Bachar Tapes (English Version) is an experimental documentary about "The Western Hostage Crisis." The crisis refers to the abduction and detention of Westerners like Terry Anderson, and Terry Waite in Lebanon in the 80s and early 90s by "Islamic militants." This episode directly and indirectly consumed Lebanese, U.S., French, and British political and public life, and precipitated a number of high-profile political scandals like the Iran-Contra affair in the U.S.
This is Not Beirut (There was and there was not)
This Is Not Beirut is a personal essay on the popular misrepresentations of Lebanon and Beirut which documents the filmmaker's own experiences while working in Lebanon. Aware of its own conceptual baggage, the tape situates itself between genres in order to better expose commonplace assumptions. The examination is thus liberated to realize the actual complexities of the identities of artist and subject. The result is a critical engagement of the disparities and disjunctions arising on site.
Nightfall (Indama Ya'ati al-Masa)
In 1975, a group of young Lebanese men joined the Palestinian organization "Fateh". Known as the "Student Brigade", they participated in the Lebanese Civil War. Some of them were killed, others left the country. Following the Israeli invasion in 1982, Palestinian armed forces left Lebanon. The "Student Brigade" dissoluted and the young Lebanese fighters have now become old nursing their solitude with alcohol, poetry, and songs.

RECONSTRUCTING HISTORIES examines the role of the documentary in representing the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990) through the experimental works of three important Lebanese post-war artists/filmmakers: Walid Raad, Jayce Salloum, and Mohamad Soueid. 

 

The Lebanese Civil War officially ended after the 1989 Taif Accord, granting amnesty to those who committed war crimes, allowing these same figures to freely exchange their guns for a seat in the government, many of whom are still in power to this day. This raises the question: How can a country move forward when its past is unresolved and prone to repetition? 

 

This policy of forgetting, and the failure of the government's handling of the nation's historical narrative, prompted a number of post-war artists - who were born during the 1960s and 1970s and grew up during times of war - to tackle the challenges of representing their recent past. These post-war artists used the documentary as a terrain to critically examine their history and how it was being represented. 

 

In the experimental documentary Hostage: The Bashar Tapes, Walid Raad challenges notions of truth and historiography, bringing to the foreground the mediation of images in the construction of historical knowledge, questioning who has the right to shape historical narratives. In This is Not Beirut, Jayce Salloum highlights the crisis of representation - from reductionism to misrepresentation - conveying the impossibility of representing the overwhelming and complex narrative of the Lebanese Civil War. While the works of Salloum and Raad are crucial to addressing the issues and limitations of the documentary form, their role has been to point out, rather than fix these problems, reflecting the postmodern approach and its tendency towards aversion to "truth" in representation. In comparison, Mohamad Soueid’s Nightfall takes a subjective rather than conceptual approach, excavating fragments of Lebanon’s past from the ruins of memory.


Hostage: The Bachar TapesWalid Raad, 16 min | United States, Lebanon | 2001

This is Not Beirut (There was and there was not), Jayce Salloum, 49 min | United States, Lebanon | 1992-1993

Nightfall (Indama Ya'ati al-Masa), Mohamad Soueid, 70 min | Lebanon | 2000


RECONSTRUCTING HISTORIES is curated by ArteEast’s film curator Ginou Choueiri and presented as part of the ArteEast legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, preserving and presenting over 17 years of film and video programming by ArteEast.

Nightfall (Indama Ya'ati al-Masa)


Synopsis: In 1975, a group of young Lebanese men joined the Palestinian organization "Fateh". Known as the "Student Brigade", they participated in the Lebanese Civil War. Some of them were killed, others left the country. Following the Israeli invasion in 1982, Palestinian armed forces left Lebanon. The "Student Brigade" dissoluted and the young Lebanese fighters have now become old nursing their solitude with alcohol, poetry, and songs.



Bio: Mohamed Soueid is born in 1959 in Beirut, Lebanon, is a writer, director, and producer. He is currently the head of the documentary department at Al Arabiya News Channel. He has directed several films and written three books: “Postponed Cinema - Lebanese Films During the Civil War” (1986); “O Heart - A Film Autobiography On The Late Movie Theatres Of Old Beirut” (1996), and the novel “Cabaret Souad” (2004).


Films:

1998: Tango of Yearning (70 min)

2000: Nightfall (68 min)

2002: Civil War (84 min)

2007: The Sky Is Not Always Above (95 min)

2008: My Heart Beats Only For Her (87 min)

2009: How Bitter My Sweet (90 min)

2011: A Spell of Absence (90 min)

2013: Hanging Dates Under Aleppo’s Citadel (90 min)

2017: Aala kad al shawk - Le Voyage immobile / As Far As Yearning.

  • Year
    2000
  • Runtime
    70 min
  • Language
    Arabic
  • Country
    Lebanon
  • Director
    Mohamad Soueid
  • Screenwriter
    Mohamad Soueid
  • Producer
    Mohamad Soueid
  • Filmmaker
    Mohamad Soueid
  • Cast
    Carmen Lebbos, Elias Khoury, Bassem Baalbaki, Abd El-Rahman, Kreidieh Abu Zouhair, Yvan Khalifeh, Daoud El-Riz, Ayda Hamdan, El-Riz Fadi Ayoub, Ali Matar
  • Cinematographer
    Mohamed Soueid
  • Editor
    Marwan Ziadeh
  • Music
    Various Artists