In a conversation with the Egyptian journal Mada Masr, the author of How to Love a Homeland, Oxana Timofeeva, was asked: “How does one love a homeland without being a fascist and without being a nationalist?” Timofeeva replied: “There is no universal answer to this question. For the given moment, I would say that to love a homeland means to take the risk of telling the truth.”
Composed of four films, this program explores the following themes suggested by Videograms: land, communities, and ecology. When the Cinematheque Beirut team began discussing the program, it felt impossible to talk about land here without thinking about Palestine—its soil and its histories. In the films surrounding us, some recent and others not so recent, we find Palestine invoked repeatedly in various discourses on land. Today, the Palestinian flag has once again become a banner of internationalism, a symbol of the oppressed and the wretched of the earth. The selection of films presented invites us not to view land within delimitations. Land, in these films, is also a landscape which, in its materiality, visuality, and mythology, is vaster than all of us. (Cinematheque Beirut)
About Cinematheque Beirut
Cinematheque Beirut is an ambitious project launched in 2018 by the Metropolis Cinema Association dedicated to researching, conserving, and disseminating heritage and contemporary Lebanese film. Through the creation of tools, content and platforms that are accessible to as many people as possible, the project objective is to highlight the rich diversity of this heritage. By focusing on research and documentation, Cinematheque Beirut is destined to bring together professionals, students, local and international journalists, researchers as well as film enthusiasts from different horizons in an environment conducive to the creation and study of cinema.
Mahdi Awada is a preservation and archive coordinator at the Cinematheque Beirut. He is a Beirut based artist holding a BA in studio arts from the American University of Beirut (AUB) and is currently pursuing his masters studies in their Art History and Curating Program. His research and artistic practice has revolved around the intersections of communication, language, and spatiality, exploring how these elements contribute to a sense of intimate belonging. His current artistic endeavors encompass painting, photography, and video, with a focus on expanding these fields through deeper examinations of their ontology. Awada incorporates the digital and virtual realms into his work, uncovering how language is encoded into the very fabric of spaces.
Anaïs Farine is a research consultant at the Cinematheque Beirut. She holds a Ph.D from the University of La Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris III. Her Ph.D thesis focused on the so-called “Euro- Mediterranean dialogue” and its Filmic Imaginary (1995 – 2017). Since 2016, Anaïs Farine has been investigating the collective practices in the making and discussion of films of the Arab Alternative Movement with a focus on the history of the Arab Ciné Club in Beirut. Her writings have been published in Cinematheque Beirut, Troubles dans les collections, Ettijahat, Débordements, Africultures, and The Funambulist Magazine, among others. She is a member of the organizing committee of the Festival Ciné-Palestine (Paris-Marseille).
‘Those Who Watch’ (dir. Hassan el Chami, 4 min)
‘Those Who Watch’ borrows the eyes, faces and gazes of secondary characters in commercial films, watching hangings and executions of victims and martyrs, and treats them in a way that reveals their perversion and lust.
Director’s bio:
Born in Lebanon, Hassane Chami is a French-based film essayist and writer.
After working as a documentary film producer for multiple years, he decided to dedicate himself to making film essays and experimental videos.
His work uses found footage, sounds, data and archives. He uses images to critique image-as-ideology and deconstruct it; and to present utopian poetic imagery that can dream of different futures. Hassane has been a contributing writer in the Lebanese-based Rehla Magazine since 2020. His writings deal with film and image analysis in relation to ideological, social and cultural phenomena. His visual work participates in several experimental festivals and is programmed in art magazines.
‘We Have Always Known the Wind’s Direction’ (dir. Inas Halabi, 2019, 12 min)
‘We Have Always Known the Wind’s Direction’ (2019-2020) grapples with invisible subterranean violence, exploring the material effects of radiation, both physically and metaphorically, and the potential burial of nuclear waste in the south of the West Bank. Radioactivity, invisible but deadly, serves as a synecdoche for a more ungraspable invisibility—the systemic networks of power and control in the region—and becomes a meditation on how to account for the ungraspable.
Director’s bio:
Inas Halabi (b.1988, Palestine) is an artist/filmmaker whose practice examines how social and political forms of power are manifested and the impact of overlooked or suppressed histories on contemporary life. Recent exhibitions and screenings include Galway Film Fleadh (2024), Reel Palestine Film Festival (2024), Luleå Biennial (2024), Toronto Palestine Film Festival (2023), Sharjah Film Platform (2023), Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival (2023), de Appel Amsterdam (2023). She lives and works between Palestine and the Netherlands.
‘South Lebanon: Story of a Village Under Siege’ (dir. Jocelyne Saab, 1976, 13 min)
In 1976, Lebanese filmmaker Jocelyne Saab traveled to the south of Lebanon to document the Israeli attacks on the Lebanese villages of Kufr Shuba and Hanine for French TV. She avoids filming the Palestinian resistance, focusing instead on the military dynamics at work in the context of the Lebanese civil war. By exposing the complicity of the Phalangists and the Israeli army, she denounces the lies of the Lebanese parties and the injustice of the violence perpetrated against Lebanese civilians in the south of the country. Though one of her earliest films, South Lebanon is reflective of Saab’s distinct filmmaking style – inquisitive, personal, unafraid of asking probing questions and taking bold positions. Her report served to shift the narrative by underlining to a European audience that the Israeli army was not only targeting Palestinians but also knowingly destroying Lebanese villages.
Director’s bio:
Jocelyne Saab (1948-2019) was a pioneering Lebanese journalist and filmmaker who fearlessly documented the realities of war and conflict in the Middle East. She began her career as a war correspondent, covering conflicts in Lebanon, Egypt, and Libya. In 1975, she turned to filmmaking, directing documentaries and fictional films that explored the human cost of war and displacement. Her work often focused on marginalized voices and challenged conventional narratives, earning her international recognition and awards. Saab’s films are a powerful testament to her courage, compassion, and commitment to social justice.
‘A Night We Held Between’ (dir. Noor Abed, 2024, 30 min)
The film centers around “Song for The Fighters,” which was found at the sonic archive of the Popular Art Center Palestine. Through the layers of the song, in a labyrinth of sounds and sites, the film conjures history as a permanent present tense, a collective and imaginative act.
The film was shot in ancient sites in Palestine – caves, carved holes, underground passages, and wild valleys – the land becomes our main character. It traverses beyond the first layer of visibility to reveal a vast, hidden world similar to the one we know. Throughout the film, scenes intertwine rituals and narratives of community and resistance into everyday representations of social life in Palestine, thus emphasizing the role of collective rhythmic movement and the potential impact that shared feelings can evoke in creating and sustaining a community.
Director’s bio:
Noor Abed (1988, Palestine) is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker. She works at the intersection of performance, media and film. Through a process of image making, her works create situations where social possibilities are both rehearsed and performed. Abed’s work has been screened and exhibited internationally at Anthology Film Archives, New York, IDFA Pavilion Shorts, Amsterdam, Alchemy film & Arts Festival, UK, Gabes Cinema Fen Film Festival, Tunisia, Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival, Lagos Biennale, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, Ujazdowski Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, The Mosaic Rooms, London, and Eye Film Museum, Amsterdam, among others. In 2020, she co-founded, with Lara Khaldi, the School of Intrusions, an independent educational collective in Ramallah, Palestine. Abed was a curatorial assistant in documenta fifteen, kassel 2021-22, and an artist in residence at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam 2022-24. She was awarded the Han Nefkens Foundation/Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Grant 2022.
