Children of War documentary, 1976, color, France, 16/35 mm, 10′
Days after the massacre in Karantina, a predominantly Muslim shanty town in Beirut, Jocelyne Saab finds and meets children who have escaped, and who are deeply traumatized by the horrific fighting they have seen with their own eyes. Jocelyne gives the children crayons and encourages them to draw while her camera rolls. She makes a bitter discovery: the only games the children engage in are war games.
The war would quickly become a way of life for them as well.
It was in 1976. The massacre took place in Karantina, a neighbourhood in Beirut. The combatants drank champagne over the corpses. They talked about “deratting” this bidonville at the outskirts of Beirut. What language can we choose to talk to children when they have just escaped a massacre? How can we approach them without turning them into circus animals? But also, what can we do for these Lebanese and Palestinian children who have been scarred? How can we hold out a hand of hope?
Lebanon in turmoil feature documentary, 1975, Lebanon, 16 mm, 75′
Months after the incident on April 13th 1975, during which Palestinian civilians were gunned down by the Phalangist militia, the numbers are even more horrifying: 6,000 dead, 20,000 injured, daily kidnappings and a capital city half destroyed. This film, a unique documentation of the Lebanese Civil War, goes back to the origins of the conflict as seen by a society that went to war singing and with their heads held high.
Unique document on the Lebanese civil war.
Jocelyne Saab (1948-2019) was a French-Lebanese filmmaker and artist. As a war reporter, documentary filmmaker, fiction filmmaker, photographer and video artist, throughout her life she developed her language and mediums of expression to denounce injustice and work for a better society. She is best known for her support for the Palestinians and for her documentary work during the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990), but also for her fiction film Dunia, shot in Egypt against the rise of fundamentalism in the country. Her films reflect the great social and anti-colonial struggles of the 20th century: that of the Polisario Front in the Western Sahara, that of Iran after the 1979 revolution, that of the Egyptians with the bread riots of 1977 and the rise of fundamentalism in the 1980s. The Lady of Saigon is a portrait of a woman who recounts the maquis and the Vietnamese communists’ struggle against the Americans.
