At this year’s Lebanese Film Festival, I found myself laughing at the absurdity of Jihad Marhaba’s Missed Fortunes, a comedic take on the dog eat dog economy of Lebanon where even misfortune is a hustle. It was the first in a line-up of short films playing at the Australian Film Television and Radio School in Sydney’s Fox Studios. Second up was Fadi Baki’s Last Days of Man Tomorrow which left audiences wondering if Charles De Gaulle did actually gift the Lebanese people a robot named Manivelle after WWII. In George Hazim’s Son of a Dancer grief and queerness seemed to align in Majed’s life as he deals with his mother’s death and the social taboo of cabaret dancing.
There was a time when Lebanese films never even registered on my viewing radar, their subject matter carrying too much of the scars of . But also because there weren’t many Lebanese films around. Over the last two decades Lebanese filmmakers have nonetheless made memorable features some of which have garnered international attention and praise like 2018’s Capernaum or 2017’s The Insult. Both films deal with heavy subject matter—Capernaum the suffering of Syrian refugees in Lebanon as well as the plight of illegal workers, The Insult the Arab racism that exists towards Palestinians.
I find that there is something missing in my cultural association as a Lebanese person living in a diaspora; on the one hand I am informed by it and on the other hand I am distant from it.
Lebanese films bring home a familiarity in accent, language and relative cultural norms, both universal but uniquely Lebanese. They remind me of the colloquialisms and sound of Levantine Arabic, a language I seldom use beyond my immediate family. But perhaps above all they remind the Lebanese diaspora that Lebanon as a nation still experiences the post-trauma of a war that lasted for 15 years and which left no one untouched or unaffected.
One of the first Lebanese films to reach a Western audience was Ziad Doueiri’s 1998 West Beirut, a look at how sectarian and religious divisions informed tribal and political affiliation and even transient borders. Yet this sectarianism does not go unquestioned. ‘When someone asks you of your religion, tell them you’re Lebanese’ says the madam of a bordello as she scorns Tarek, a teenage boy, for being at the brothel in the first place.
In Australia I still get asked what religion I am when I say I’m Lebanese Australian. It’s not a simple question. It’s confronting because of its potential to be interpreted as indicating some unsubstantiated solidarity with a political or religious group within the context of the civil war. It’s especially uncomfortable when someone you’ve just met poses that question to you, as though they have a right to know.
West Beirut revolves around the experience of three teenagers, Tarek, Omar and May. Two Muslim boys and a Christian girl. It’s not about the war, but it is about the war. You just can’t escape it. Just as the characters can’t ignore the war around them, the audience cannot either. The same could be said of the Lebanese film industry, the civil war looms large in the stories they tell.
In Lebanese film, no one is a hero but everyone is a victim. The reality is there were no winners in the civil war, only destruction and despair.
Even as a Lebanese person who didn’t experience the civil war, it remains a subject which colours my outlook and perception. In Lebanese film, no one is a hero but everyone is a victim. The reality is there were no winners in the civil war, only destruction and despair. And perhaps there’s a desire for Lebanese people to alienate themselves from that tragedy, or even from ‘Lebanese’ as an identity—a kind of self-loathing at our collective misfortune. This point is highlighted in West Beirut when Tarek says to his father, he’s Phoenician not Arab, and his father responds telling him that he should be proud of his Arab heritage.
Lebanese films may be moving away from war as a central theme however they still offer us many insights into the contemporary makeup of the country, its unremitting history, the generational trauma that exists, and the socio-economic failure that has led many Lebanese people to leave the country. Yet I find that there is something missing in my cultural association as a Lebanese person living in a diaspora; on the one hand I am informed by it and on the other hand I am distant from it, keeping it at arm’s length, cautious and uncomfortable.
In my conversation with Camille Lattouf, director and co-founder of the Lebanese Film Festival he tells me that the festival is about bridging that gap. It’s about making contemporary personal connections with Lebanon rather than connecting through one’s own parents. For me it’s about taking ownership of the present and of history and articulating it in new and relevant ways for a new generation of Lebanese people who like me have become part of a questioning diaspora and are experiencing a crisis of belonging.
is in Sydney until Saturday September 7, and then moves around the country.
