West Beirut + Panel discussion
Dir: Ziad Doueiri
Lebanon 1998, 1hr 45mins, subtitled
Set in Lebanon during the Civil War of 1975, West Beirut is the gripping and heart-warming story of two young boys, Tarek and Omar. At first the war is an opportunity for adventure, which the boys document on their Super 8 camera. But soon, religious and patriarchal tensions arise – their personal war leading from inexorable adventure to tragedy. Based on the award-winning writer and director’s boyhood memories, the film underscores the terrors children suffer during wartime.
If you’d like to book for the panel discussion only (starting 7pm), please email [email protected] to reserve a free place.
Whose Gaze is It Anyway, On Syria - Panel discussion
in partnership with the Arab British Centre
Of all the Arab Springs or Awakenings, the Syrian uprising has been the most YouTubed. After 2012, Syrian citizen journalists, filmmakers and ‘filmers’ – people with no experience of professional filmmaking – posted some 300,000 short films, reports and moving images on the Internet. The majority of these works, recorded on mobile recording devices, ushered in a new documentary aesthetic on the ways in which the last four years of conflict in Syria has been captured, seen, portrayed and explored.
Following the film, a panel discussion will take place, featuring clips from the work of two featured Syrian filmmakers:
Yasmin Fedda is a director whose recent films include the documentary Queens of Syria (2014), about Syrian refugee women performing Euripides’ ‘The Trojan Women’ and Tale of Two Syrias (2012), intimate portrayals of two real life characters, an Iraqi fashion designer in Damascus and a man who has sought refuge in a Christian monastery.
Zaher Omareen is a Syrian director, writer and artist. His films include Two Stories (2013), about exile, a red trainer and different visual approaches to remembering conflict, as well as his current film project which draws on footage from inside the Syrian conflict. Omareen is the artistic director of Syria’s Mobile Phone Film Festival, an international competition featuring pocket films, mobile-mentaries and smartphone films, all recorded on mobile recording devices, which held festival screenings in war-torn Syria last year. Zaher will appear via Skype
Their discussion with the moderator Malu Halasa, will explore the new aesthetics of documentary filmmaking coming out of the Syrian experience; filmmaking during the time of conflict; the power of the image to inform, change international opinion as well as provide a platform for individual expression; and the challenges facing filmmakers after four hard years of conflict, among other topics. The discussion will be illustrated by showing clips from the filmmakers’ work.
Biographies
Yasmin Fedda is an award-winning documentary filmmaker. Her films have been BAFTA nominated and screened at Sundance. She has a PhD in transdisciplinary documentary film, for which she was awarded a scholarship in Peace-Building and the World of Documentary Film from the University of Edinburgh. Fedda is a cofounder of Highlight Arts, an organisation that works with artists in times of conflict.
Zaher Omareen is a Syrian researcher and writer whose articles and short stories have been published in the Arab and English press. His short story “First Safety Manoeuvre” won a 2012 prize awarded by the Danish Institute in Damascus and the Copenhagen Festival of Literature. He has worked on independent cultural initiatives in Syria and Europe. He studied media, journalism, and theatrical and dramatic arts in Damascus, and holds a MA in media and cultural studies from Sussex University. Omareen, a PhD candidate in contemporary documentary cinema and new media at Goldsmiths, in London, recently completed Tales of the Orontes River, a collection of short stories drawn from the collective memories of the 1982 Hama massacre. He also co-edited Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Frontline (Saqi Books, 2014).
Malu Halasa is a writer and editor in London. Her books include: Syria Speaks – Art and Culture from the Frontline (2014), with Zaher Omareen; Transit Tehran: Young Iran and Its Inspirations (2009); The Secret Life of Syrian Lingerie: Intimacy and Design (2008; among others. In 2012–13, she co-curated an exhibition on art from the Syrian uprising – from cartoons to art and short films – that was shown in Amsterdam, Copenhagen and London, and in 2009, she curated Transit Tehran: Art and Documentary Films from Iran for the Atrium Gallery, LSE. She is presently working on an archive of Syrian uprising art for the British Museum and has finished her first novel.
