THE FILMS OF JOCELYNE SAAB

The 1982 siege of Beirut was to leave a permanent mark on Jocelyne Saab’s memory and that of her city. BEIRUT, MY CITY begins with the director in front of the camera, surveying the destruction of her own family home at the hands of the Israeli air force. The house is, in her own words, the house of every Lebanese confronted by the memory of carbonized ruins. There is a sense of febrile immediacy that scorches every frame of this film, something that the spectator feels rather than sees. The film’s recovery of the final farewell of West Beirut to the fedayeen, forced out of Lebanon by the Zionist invasion, is vehement and glowing. The aftermath is chronicled in the melancholic but somewhat hopeful SHIP OF EXILE, which sees Saab aboard to document the evacuation of the PLO from Beirut.

BEIRUT, MY CITY / BEYROUTH, MA VILLE
1982, 37 min, 16mm-to-DCP

SHIP OF EXILE / LE BATEAU DE L’EXIL
1982, 16 min, 16mm-to-DCP. In Arabic with English subtitles.

Total running time: ca. 65 min.