THE FILMS OF JOCELYNE SAAB

“When anger is imprisoned, it bursts into flames,” observes the stupefied voiceover in BEIRUT, NEVER AGAIN. While in her previous documentary, LEBANON IN TURMOIL, the Lebanese director had pieced together the causes behind the imminent explosion, in this film she captures the dislocation that followed it. The film is a morphological treatment of a city dismembered by war, in the guise of an audiovisual poem. The focus is on the metaphysical improbability of the new landscape designed by armed confrontations, at once violently hyperreal and totally surreal. A counterpoint to the paternoster of the male Palestinian fighter is provided in PALESTINIAN WOMEN, where the director tells the ordinary stories of women living under regional imperialism. Neither displacement nor gender dissuade these women from their lives.

PALESTINIAN WOMEN / LES FEMMES PALESTINIENNES
1974, 11 min, 16mm-to-DCP

BEIRUT, NEVER AGAIN / BEYROUTH JAMAIS PLUS
1976, 37 min, 16mm-to-DCP