Lifestyle FRIDAY, AUGUST 1, 2014 Films help Lebanese come to terms with dark past ebanon’s civil war ended a quarter of a century ago but its But from 2005 — when former prime minister Rafik Hariri was filmmakers remain fixated on this dark period, seeing their assassinated and Syria’s nearly 30-year domination of Lebanon Lmovies as a kind of catharsis to help heal collective trauma. ended-there has been a return to the civil war genre, according to The industry’s focus contrasts sharply with a society that has yet to filmmaker and professor Hadi Zakak. “Filmmakers have since tried come to terms with its devastating past, where war has marked to go to the heart of the problem, to explain why Lebanon is still at the last five generations-and each community, be it Christian or war, even if in a different form,” he said. Muslim, looks back through a different lens. In the last nine years, the country has been rocked by a string The latest example to hit the screens is “Mirath” of political crises, the targeted killings of politicians and journalists, (“Heritages”) by French-Lebanese filmmaker Philippe Aractingi. sectarian clashes and a war with Israel. “Since 2005, there has been Mingling fact and fiction, Aractingi shares with his children an undeclared civil war,” said Zakak. “Filmmakers are therefore try- memories of the 1975-1990 war, his exile and his return home, ing to understand the past to make sense of the present.” a story to which most Lebanese can relate. “The Lebanese tend to deny the past and the war” that pitted Christian militias Forced disappearances against Palestinian groups and their Lebanese Muslim and left- Deadly clashes that have erupted, especially since the war ist allies, Aractingi told AFP. broke out in neighbouring Syria, are a reminder that the threat of “So discussing the war through cinema is kind of cathartic. In renewed sectarian conflict is never far away. In March, 27 people ‘Mirath’, I talk about how we need to communicate with our chil- were killed in the northern port city of Tripoli alone during 12 days dren, so that (war) never returns.” Among Aractingi’s other films of fighting between Sunni Muslim fighters, who largely support are the 2005 “Bosta” (The Autobus) and the 2007 “Under the Syria’s rebels, and gunmen from the Alawite minority, who back Bombs”, which both represented Lebanon at the Academy Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Awards. Nadine Labaki, the superstar of Lebanon’s contemporary cine- Unlike Egypt, the region’s filmmaking hub, Lebanese cinema ma and director of the 2007 comedy “Caramel”, made “Where Do has long suffered from a lack of government support, pushing We Go Now” in 2011, a film both poignant and funny in which directors to seek financing abroad. The ironic yet deeply romantic Christian and Muslim women in the same village try to convince films of the Rahbani brothers marked the 1960s, Lebanon’s golden their husbands to stop fighting each other. While many aspects of age. But then came the war, which ripped the country apart and Lebanon’s civil war remain unresolved, among the most painful File picture dated December 17, 2005 shows Lebanese film deepened the sectarian divide. Some 150,000 people were killed are the issue of forced disappearances. ’Autobus’ or ‘Bosta’ cast, including director Philippe and thousands of others disappeared in the bloodshed. The big Bahij Hjeij’s film “Here Comes The Rain”, also made in 2011, tells Aractingi (top), Rodney Haddad, Nada bou Farhat and screen became a medium for self-expression in a country that was the story of the difficult return home of a man who spent 20 years Nadine Labaki posing for a picture in Dubai during the Gulf falling apart. in captivity. In 2013, Eliane al-Raheb made “Layali Bala Nawm” emirate’s international film festival. — AFP photos (“Sleepless Nights”), which portrays the meeting of an ex-militia- ‘Still at war’ man with the mother of a disappeared fighter. The civil war, how- Two filmmakers’ names stood out during the civil war years: ever, is still deemed “too sensitive” so kept off the school curricu- Burhan Alawiyeh and internationally renowned Maroun Baghdadi, lum, where history instruction ends with the final withdrawal of who died at 43, soon after the conflict ended. Major productions French troops in 1946, three years after independence. by Baghdadi-notably “Little Wars” (1982) and “Out of Life” (1991), “When I see these films, I feel like I’m discovering my own coun- about Western journalists being taken hostage-ushered in a string try,” said Christiane, a 22-year-old born after the civil war ended. For of films about the “events”, a euphemism the Lebanese still use to Aractingi, the country’s filmmakers have their work cut out for them refer to the war. for the foreseeable future. “Movies about the war will be made as In the post-war 1990s, Ziad Doueiri’s “West Beirut” portrayed long as the Lebanese keep living in denial of their past.”— AFP the lives of adolescents divided by war, winning the Francois Chalais prize at Cannes. A lull followed, with films such as “Around the Pink House” by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, and Randa Chahhal Sabbagh’s prize-winning “The Kite” departing from the subject of war. File picture taken in Paris on December 8, 1999 shows late Lebanese filmmaker Randa Chahal Sabbag posing in front of a poster for her film on the Lebanese civil war ‘Civilisees’. File picture dated August 26, 2006 shows Lebanese actress A file picture dated 24 August 2006 shows Lebanese actress File picture dated October 22, 2001 shows Lebanese musician Nada Abu Farhat in the southern Lebanese town of Sidiqin, Nada Abu Farhat standing in front of two French UN soldiers and actor Ziad Rahbani with a number of unidentified actors during the shooting of ‘Rain’ by Director Philippe Aractingi. with the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL), in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley during shooting of late in the southern border town of Naqura, during the shooting Lebanese director Randa Chahal’s film ‘Cerf Volant’. of ‘Summer Rain’ by Director Philippe Aractingi..