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 Tapes, Walid 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.
This is Not Beirut (There was and there was not)
Synopsis: This film at the most fundamental level, a personal project; i) examining the use and production of images/representations of Lebanon and Beirut both in the West and in Lebanon itself, ii) recording the interactions and experiences while working in Lebanon, focusing on the undertaking of this representational process as a Lebanese and a westernized, foreign-born mediator with cultural connections and baggage of both the West and Lebanon and some of the disparities and disjunctions arising in each, and iii) situating the work between genres looking from the inside out at each and engaging critically at the assumptions imposed and thus broken in this site of complexity one’s identity is found and constructed in.
Over 200 hours of Hi-8, VHS and found film material was recorded and collected in Lebanon, during the year of 1992, shortly after what is called “the end of the Lebanese Civil War” – though it continues in other forms. This project tries to make some sense out of that material and the acquisition of it, sometimes directly and at other times a sideways glance at our skewed attempts to produce works, framing the relationships, sites, subjects, and the practical and conceptual issues engaged in.
One cannot hope with this project to elucidate the terms of Lebanon's existence (narrowly if at all explicated in the West) but only to provide some countenance, inquiry and provocation and with this a chance for responses to them to be determined within a more problematized field.
Bio: As if an itinerant geographer, Salloum observes the world and creates a subjective archive of images that he either gleans or produces. He tends to go only where he is invited or where there is an intrinsic affinity, his projects being rooted in an intimate engagement with place. A grandson of Syrian immigrants he was born and raised on Sylix (Okanagan) territory in Kelowna, BC. After 21 years living and working in San Francisco, Banff, Toronto, San Diego, Beirut, and New York he has been based on the unceded Xʷməθkʷey̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) + Səíl̓wətaʔł (Tsleil-Waututh) land of ‘Vancouver’ for 23 years. His videotapes, photographs, installations, and other cultural projects engage the personal/subjective, reconfiguring notions of identity, community, history, boundaries, exile, (trans/inter/intra) nationalism and resistance. His work has involved production and facilitation in many locales including Afghanistan, Lebanon, Palestine, the former Yugoslavia, Europa, San Francisco, San Diego, New York, Central America, Mexico, Columbia, Ecuador, Kamloops, Kelowna, Cumberland House, Vancouver, Aotearoa, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Philippines and Australia. He has exhibited pervasively at the widest range of local and international venues possible, from the smallest unnamed storefronts in his downtown eastside Vancouver neighbourhood to institutions such as the Musée du Louvre, Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum, Centre Georges Pompidou, National Gallery of Canada, Bienal De La Havana, Sharjah Biennial, Biennale of Sydney and the Rotterdam International Film Festival.
- Year1992-1993
- Runtime49 minutes
- LanguageEnglish, Arabic
- CountryUnited States, Lebanon
- DirectorJayce Salloum
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 Tapes, Walid 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.
This is Not Beirut (There was and there was not)
Synopsis: This film at the most fundamental level, a personal project; i) examining the use and production of images/representations of Lebanon and Beirut both in the West and in Lebanon itself, ii) recording the interactions and experiences while working in Lebanon, focusing on the undertaking of this representational process as a Lebanese and a westernized, foreign-born mediator with cultural connections and baggage of both the West and Lebanon and some of the disparities and disjunctions arising in each, and iii) situating the work between genres looking from the inside out at each and engaging critically at the assumptions imposed and thus broken in this site of complexity one’s identity is found and constructed in.
Over 200 hours of Hi-8, VHS and found film material was recorded and collected in Lebanon, during the year of 1992, shortly after what is called “the end of the Lebanese Civil War” – though it continues in other forms. This project tries to make some sense out of that material and the acquisition of it, sometimes directly and at other times a sideways glance at our skewed attempts to produce works, framing the relationships, sites, subjects, and the practical and conceptual issues engaged in.
One cannot hope with this project to elucidate the terms of Lebanon's existence (narrowly if at all explicated in the West) but only to provide some countenance, inquiry and provocation and with this a chance for responses to them to be determined within a more problematized field.
Bio: As if an itinerant geographer, Salloum observes the world and creates a subjective archive of images that he either gleans or produces. He tends to go only where he is invited or where there is an intrinsic affinity, his projects being rooted in an intimate engagement with place. A grandson of Syrian immigrants he was born and raised on Sylix (Okanagan) territory in Kelowna, BC. After 21 years living and working in San Francisco, Banff, Toronto, San Diego, Beirut, and New York he has been based on the unceded Xʷməθkʷey̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) + Səíl̓wətaʔł (Tsleil-Waututh) land of ‘Vancouver’ for 23 years. His videotapes, photographs, installations, and other cultural projects engage the personal/subjective, reconfiguring notions of identity, community, history, boundaries, exile, (trans/inter/intra) nationalism and resistance. His work has involved production and facilitation in many locales including Afghanistan, Lebanon, Palestine, the former Yugoslavia, Europa, San Francisco, San Diego, New York, Central America, Mexico, Columbia, Ecuador, Kamloops, Kelowna, Cumberland House, Vancouver, Aotearoa, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Philippines and Australia. He has exhibited pervasively at the widest range of local and international venues possible, from the smallest unnamed storefronts in his downtown eastside Vancouver neighbourhood to institutions such as the Musée du Louvre, Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum, Centre Georges Pompidou, National Gallery of Canada, Bienal De La Havana, Sharjah Biennial, Biennale of Sydney and the Rotterdam International Film Festival.
- Year1992-1993
- Runtime49 minutes
- LanguageEnglish, Arabic
- CountryUnited States, Lebanon
- DirectorJayce Salloum