Is Lebanese Cinema Defined by the War?
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“Caramel”
س ّكر بنات
Director: Nadine Labaki Year of release: 2007 Significance: “Caramel” is a fascinating social and cultural study of five women of different backgrounds who live in postwar Beirut and cope with the struggles of being Lebanese women — and all that reality entails when it comes to love, infidelity, repressed sexuality, traditions, cultural obligations, fear of aging, family pressures. This film premiered at Cannes in 2007 and has had unprecedented international success for any Lebanese film to date. As a testament to its success, it was released in 40 countries and has been hugely profitable, raking in approximately 14 times its production budget of $1.6 million.
10 دخان بال نار
“Beirut Open City”
Director: Samir Habchi Year of release: 2008 Significance: As the first feature film made in Lebanon after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, “Beirut Open City” is an intriguing film with a strong narrative. It takes a creative approach to show a city that is partly being reconstructed after the civil war, but is also filled with people who live in anxiety and fear of those around them. The film is about an Egyptian filmmaker who comes to Beirut to make a film about repression in the Arab world; he advocates the view that Beirut is more liberal and offers more freedom of expression than other places in the Middle East. Despite this, he encounters horrific Lebanese repression and faces numerous challenges socially and politically while writing the script for his film.
An Interview with
Ziad Doueiri
With “West Beyrouth,” what drove you to make a film about the civil war? I don’t know if you can call it a film about the civil war. The war in the film is depicted as just the background. It’s really about the relationship between a couple of friends and how they evolve in that time of upheaval. The film is not strictly about the civil war, but I can also not deny that fact that part of my upbringing happened during that time when the civil war started. It’s also about other things going around, how those teenagers grow to mature, how they become aware of the fragility that war leaves, and also having fun. Wars tend to be portrayed in a very dramatic sense, but I was trying to say in the film that the war that happened was a license to do anything because all the rules break down. The war brings chaos, and when you’re young you take advantage of that chaos to discover what you want — your sexuality, to have fun, and to be a regular teenager. My perspective on it was to look at it from the lighter side, the humorous side. I remember growing up, and it was not so traumatic. It had difficult moments, but overall I was just a regular teenager. How much of the film was circumstantial and how much was intentional? When you write, you have to take historical fact and make it work for your story. You don’t take your story and make it history. So a lot of things that were happening in terms of historical fact, I had to mesh them into the story line. I made the film start the day the civil war starts, and it ends with the arrival of the Israeli army in 1982.
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How would you say the film was received in Lebanon? I guess it was really well received, because there was no moviemaking going on in Lebanon at the time, and the language I was using in the film was unheard of — because I was using a lot of curse words and making reference to sexuality. There was some humor to it and a quick dynamism to it. I personally did not think that the film would work, and in fact I didn’t even think that it would come out. But you always hope that it would, because you want to touch as big an audience as possible – and then when it came it was a surprise. The film got sold a lot, all over the world. At that time when filmmakers were struggling — it took me three years to find financing for that film — it did really well.