Beyrouth, jamais plus

From the ruins of downtown Beirut to the destroyed villages of South Lebanon, the images filmed by Jocelyne Saab between 1976 and 1982 trace a geography of destruction that seems to belong to our present. Israeli invasions, occupation, bombardments, exodus: disasters run through History and never cease to occur. Yet by documenting what escapes the mere narrative of events, the Lebanese filmmaker composes a parallel geography of resistance, bringing forth what persists through the poetic force of images and words. The “Beirut Trilogy” thus captures the fragility of things and beings in wartime, the filmmaker’s body becoming a point of passage between these devastated spaces, and the camera a means of moving through them and reconnecting what war tears apart. This journey is shaped by the dialogue her images establish with the words of poet and artist Etel Adnan.
In BEYROUTH, JAMAIS PLUS, Saab films the city centre, which has become a ghost town within a matter of months. Adnan’s poem singularly captures the bewilderment at the ruins and its effects on memory: mornings are now “without memories.” Deserted streets, stray cats, dismembered mannequins: words no longer seem able to name things. Two years later, the filmmaker writes a LETTRE DE BEYROUTH in a café “outside time,” evoking the inhabitants of a city “who continue to call this war ‘events,’ because memory no longer functions.” Strangest of all is hearing these young Beirutis speak of postwar life and peacetime in 1979, in a reversal of temporalities that runs through all three films and leaves today’s viewer with a sense of vertigo. In BEYROUTH, MA VILLE, the Israeli army lays siege to the capital. Within this enclosed space, what remains visible collides with what has disappeared. The words of playwright Roger Assaf accompany a destruction that is now intimate: Saab’s family home lies in ruins, taking with it one hundred and fifty years of history. Nearly half a century later, the sense of dread lies precisely here: these images do not belong to History, but once again compose the landscapes of Lebanon. (Ghada Sayegh)

In the presence of Mathilde Rouxel (Jocelyne Saab Association).
This film will be shown as part of the screening THE BEIRUT TRILOGY.