Independent film in Lebanon – curated by Rasha Salti

In Praise of Ex-centricity: A Selection of Short Videos and Films from Post-war Lebanon.

In spite of the rich diversity of short films and videos in post-war Lebanon, whether in genre, content, approach, choice of medium, generally, they share discreetly, in slight of hand, at times with intention and others without, the disposition of being marginal, eccentric, or more literally, ex-centric. Some Lebanese visual artists and filmmakers have had no qualms making videos that dwell agreeably in the ambiguous terrain between video art and experimental cinema, as with Ali Cherri’s A Circle Around the Sun, or Ahmad Ghossein’s Faces Applauding Alone.

Some, if not most, blur without restraint the boundaries between the fiction and non-fiction genre. At one level, there is an explicit motivation to cast real-life stories and non-professional actors in a fictional setting, as with Fadi Dabaja’s The Coffee Smell, one of the rare short films set in a Palestinian refugee camp, inspired from everyday stories. Same for Gilles Tarazi’s Tomorrow 6:30 that casts an all too familiar conundrum of the disillusioned Lebanese youth aspiring to make a better living outside the country. Similarly, there is an equally explicit motivation to extract poetry and fictional dimensions from real-life characters filmed in non-fictional format, as with Sarmad Louis’s The Purple Umbrella and Pamela Ghanimeh’s Lemon Flowers.

At another level, the distinctively unabashed delving into the personal, intimate and subjective muddies the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction more profoundly. Specifically, the use of "first person" proposes a re-constitution and critical interrogation of collective memory, public and private space, official discourse and political imperative, as in A Circle Around the Sun. Meanders in the subjective and intimate often resorts to innovative and bold use of archival material, whether personal or public, as in Faces Applauding Alone.

Some Lebanese filmmakers have liberally substituted one medium for another, again without qualms, so for lack of means, video was used instead of 16mm or 35mm, but so have the rules and mindset for filming in 16mm or 35mm, as with Sarmad Louis’s The Purple Umbrella.

At the risk of seeming profoundly idiosyncratic, Lebanese short videos and films are utterly embedded in the locality of their universe, the lived experience of the moment, its contradictions, wounds, unspoken secrets, intimate vocabulary. In other words, or reversely, the motivation to tell a "universal" story, one that abides to the paradigms of mainstream production is almost wholly absent, as with all the works included in the selection. There is a genuine concern for communicability, however the terms of narrative, plot, character construction, manufacture of image and meaning are different, enraptured with poetry and proudly ex-centric.