Mizna Film Series

Beirut: Post/Protracted Civil War

Expired August 30, 2021 4:59 AM
Already unlocked? for access

Encountering the real effects of destruction, the films in this Beirut-focused series complicate the relationship between fact and fiction, using poetry and other forms of intermediality to witness what emerges from ruins. Beirut, a city that has often been the site of sectarian, colonialist and imperialist violence, is a context which produces films that critically engage with images related to moments during, between, and after war and upheaval. At the center of this series is a retrospective of several early films by Jocelyne Saab, who uses documentary form to demonstrate the effects of violence in Lebanon and to challenge dominant western media perceptions and practices of filming and exhibiting war in Beirut. This series coincides with and honors the one year anniversary of the devastating Beirut Port explosion through the celebration of Lebanese filmmaking.


Cultural works made in post-war Lebanon are often labyrinthine in form and content, as artists and their subjects attempt to understand, navigate, and resist the sectarian power structures that led to the war, and reckon with its boundless destruction. As the Lebanese people continue to live under protracted war infrastructures, the questions raised in the August films by Mai Masri and Jean Chamoun, Jalal Toufic and Graziella Rizkallah Toufic, and Ghassan Salhab remain as relevant as ever.

A trilogy of videos on cities that relate them to the realms with which they have the most affinity but that cannot be reached by these cities’ most characteristic modes of transportation (cars in Beirut, buses and Bosphorus ferries in Istanbul, and tramways, buses, ferries, and the metro in Hong Kong): the labyrinth for postwar Beirut, the Imaginal World (‘ālam al-khayāl) for Istanbul and its songs, and “Solaris” for Hong Kong. The trilogy presents a one- way trip to labyrinthine postwar Beirut; a two-way trip to Imaginal Istanbul; and a three-way trip to a Hong Kong colored by desirous projections.


Attempt 137 to Map the Drive, 2011

Ah Istanbul, 2013

An Indefinite Visit to Hong Kong, Solaris, 2016

  • Year
    2011-2016
  • Runtime
    45 minutes
  • Country
    Lebanon, Turkey, Hong Kong
  • Director
    Jalal Toufic, Graziella Rizkallah Toufic